


The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Earth Empire

by ReneeMontoya



Series: Astraea [2]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alternate Universe - On The Run, Alternate Universe - Space, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-04-22 15:41:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4841042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReneeMontoya/pseuds/ReneeMontoya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>War wages throughout the galaxy as Kuvira the Great Uniter continues her devastating assault on the United Republic in an attempt to rebuild the Earth’s shattered empire following the death of Queen Hou-Ting at the hands of Zaheer. Mako, a heroic but world-weary cop from the Republic, has been given the nearly impossible task of protecting Prince Wu, rightful ruler of the Earth Empire and royal pain in the arse. They have been on the run from Kuvira’s assassins for months and are now stranded on Ba Sing Se with no friends, no money, no ship, and no means of escape.</p><p>Sidequel to Cowboy Raava</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, yeah, this is set in the same universe as my Korrasami fic Cowboy Raava and it is essential that you read that before reading this! (Okay, so that's not true. You don't have to read Cowboy Raava to read this but I have like zero integrity so I'm not above lying to you.)

Mako shuddered as cold rainwater dribbled down the back of his neck. It had been raining in this part of the under-city all week and Mako was sick of it. The doorway he was sheltering in was cold and damp, his clothes were cold and damp, even his bones felt cold and damp. The air reeked of smoke and dirt and unwashed bodies and engine oil. Somewhere overhead, a train rattled past making the buildings tremble.

Mako tried to remember the last time he’d had a hot shower. He felt as though the grime of the city had burrowed into his skin. He scratched his jaw and sucked his teeth in frustration. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a shave and it was beginning to irritate him.

That wasn’t the only thing that was getting on his nerves either.

“Mako! I’m cold!”

Mako sighed and checked the street again for the hundredth time, peering through the rain and the dark. Cloaked in smog and in the shadow of the two upper-cities, the under-city of Ba Sing Se was almost perpetually dark, even during the day. At night though, the under-city’s rabbit-warren of alleyways and ramshackle houses gave ‘dark’ a whole new meaning. After nightfall, people would huddle like moths around the flickering neon signs of bars and strip clubs and illegal fighting rings to keep the darkness at bay.

“Mako! I think something just crawled into my shoe!”

Mako ground his teeth together and checked the street again for the hundred-and-first time.

“ _Mako!_ ” Wu whined.“I’m hungry!”

Mako rolled his eyes and wiped the rain-slick hair out of his face.

“ _Makooooo!_ Can we go in now?”

Mako pulled his hood up and stepped out into the muddy street. “Fine,” he said gruffly. “Come on then, princess.” He trudged through the mud towards the tavern where it hoped to find the drunk ship captain he’d heard so much about.

The tavern was a patchwork of corroding brickwork, corrugated metal sheeting, and rotting wooden planks. The building was little more than a shack. But then compared to the rest of the sprawling shanty-city that clung like barnacles to the foundations of the chrome-and-glass skyscrapers, this tavern was practically a palace.

Above the doorway, a flickering neon-purple dragon bared its teeth, bathing the narrow street in a lilac glow.

Mako wrapped his arms tightly around his chest. The straps of his backpack were digging into his shoulders and the thick mud clung to his feet, pulling him down with every step. Halfway across the alley he glanced back to make sure Wu hadn’t wandered off. “What are you doing?” Mako asked in disbelief.

“Do you know how much these shoes cost?!” Wu said, waving his shoes at Mako and wading barefoot through the mud.

Mako opened his mouth to say something but changed his mind. He grabbed Wu by the wrist and yanked him through the doorway of the bar.

The heat and noise inside the tavern hit Mako like a fist, almost taking his breath away. Jazz music was playing but was barely audible over the shouting, singing, and swearing of the tavern’s patrons. Mako stepped aside to let the bouncer throw a bloodied man, clinging to his dignity and consciousness, out into the street.

‘Korra would love it here,’ Mako thought with a sad smile. He peeled his sodden coat and hoodie off, rung the water out of his scarf, and ran his fingers through his wet hair. It was getting too long and he had to keep flicking it out of his eyes.

They left their dripping coats by the door and squeezed through the crowd towards the bar.

“You got money?” the man behind the bar asked, wiping a glass on his greasy apron. He glared at the bedraggled pair suspiciously through his bushy eyebrows.

“Er, y-yes. Yes, sir,” Mako stuttered, fumbling the last few copper yuans in his pocket. The paper money he had stuffed in his socks was useless. Republic money was little better than toilet paper in the Earth Empire.

“Then welcome to The Jasmine Dragon! Best shithole in the city!” the man said, beaming. Mako arched his eyebrows. That was quite a boast to make when ‘the city’ was basically the entire planet. “Weapons in the bucket, if you please!”

Mako unbuckled the holster from his hip and dropped his gun into the bucket at the end of the crowded bar. He smiled awkwardly at the bartender as he unholstered the gun strapped to his thigh, unsheathed the knife from his boot, took the small blade from his belt, pulled the baton out of his jacket, fished the stun gun and flash grenades out of his pockets, and dumped it all in the bucket.

Out of the corner of his eye, Mako saw Wu emptying a bowl of peanuts into his pocket.

“So,” the bartender said jovially, spreading his arms invitingly, “what can I get you boys?”

Wu set his shoes down on the bar and smiled at the bartender. “What’s your wine selection, my good man?” Wu asked as if he were in one of the upper-city’s exclusive sky-hotels.

“Red or … white,” the bartender said.

Wu sighed and shot Mako a meaningful look, the exact meaning of which was lost on Mako.

“I’ll have an Old Fashioned please,” Wu said, leaning on the bar.

The bartender looked at Wu blankly. “An old fashioned what?”

“An Old Fashioned!” Wu said indignantly. The bartender shook his head and shrugged. Wu sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. Mako recognised that look from somewhere but couldn’t quite place it. “You mix brown sugar and water to make a syrup then add bourbon, ice, two slices of orange, those sugary cherries, and … no wait, that’s not right … maybe the bourbon goes in …. Oh, wait, I forgot, what bitters do you have?”

The bartender looked at Mako pleadingly.

“He’ll have an aloe-cucumber water.”

Wu spun around, put an arm around Mako’s shoulders and turned him away from the bartender.

“Okay, what about a White Russian?” he whispered.

“No.”

“A Sex On The Beach?”

“No.”

“A Pina Colada?”

“No.”

“A rum and coke?!”

“We don’t have any money.”

“Ah. Okay.” Wu turned back to the bar. “One aloe-cucumber wa-” Wu glanced back at Mako. “Seriously?” he whispered.

Mako nodded and fought a smile as he slid the last of his coins across the bar. “Seriously.”

Wu sighed and turned disappointedly back to the frustrated bartender. “One aloe-cucumber water please. With a squiggly straw. No, two. And an umbrella. And ice if that’s okay. No, wait … forget the umbrella.” While he waited for his drink, Wu sat on one of the faded barstools, his back to the bar. “You not having anything?”

Mako scratched his jaw again. “No, I’m okay.”

“So …” Wu said, still waiting for his drink. “When’s this mysterious stranger getting here? Did he give you a code word or something? You’d better tell me what it is in case you forget. Oh! What if this guy’s a double agent working for _you know who_ with the scary eyebrows?”

“I … He’s not a … Do you never pay attention? I just heard there’s a captain of a cargo ship who spends a lot of time at this bar. He might be able to give us a ride. Why does everything have to be so overdramatic with you?”

Wu shrugged. “Hmm. Who knows? Probably something to … Oh, thank you,” Wu said, taking his drink and slurping on the straw. “Probably something to do with my exorbitant wealth and privilege,” he continued, “and all the responsibilities and pressures, not to mention the boredom, of being royalty. And deep-rooted daddy-issues maybe. Who knows?”

Mako pinched the bridge of his nose in weary frustration.

“You sure you’re not having anything?” Wu asked, spearing a slice of cucumber with his straw and popping it into his mouth. “These aloe-cucumber things are really good for your skin apparently. Not that you’d need it. You have a great complexion. Do you moisturise?”

“No more money,” Mako said, distractedly, watching Wu lick his delicate lips. He looked away before Wu could notice and scanned the crowded, smoke-fogged bar, trying to spot the man he was looking for.

“Wait, you spent the last of your money on me?” Wu said, his lip quivering. “That’s so sweet.”

Mako raised his eyebrows and smiled cheekily. “Remember that when I sell your shoes for dinner.”

Wu gasped and held a hand to his chest as if his heart had given out. “You wouldn’t!”

“I would.”

“You are the worst kind of person, Mako!”

Mako chuckled and dumped his backpack down next to Wu.

“Stay here. I’m gonna have a look around. See if I can find our mysterious and morally ambiguous captain.”

“Wait wait wait!” Wu hissed, tugging at Mako’s arm.

“What?” Mako grunted.

“Should we be using false names? We should be using false names! And we’ll need convincing back stories!”

“No.”

“Well we’ll need some kind of cover. I can’t just introduce myself as Prince Wu, can I? Umm, you can be my fiancé and …”

“No!”

“What? You think I’m not good enough for you? You think you could do better? Or are you not ready to commit, Mako?! Why not?! I really feel like I’m ready and you should know I’ve had a lot of offers and I don’t know if I can wait so …”

“Wu!”

“Mmm-hmm?”

“Be. _Quiet_.” Mako winced slightly. He hadn’t meant to be so brusque with Wu. “Just … just stay and hang out at the bar. Try not to get into trouble. Don’t hit on anyone and don’t order any more drinks.”

“Okay, okay,” Wu said, defeatedly. “But we should have a signal.”

“A signal for what?” Mako asked, raising his voice over the din as he backed away from the bar.

“Y’know, a signal!” Mako spread his arms in mock confusion. “For danger. Like if something goes wrong and we have to bail!” Wu said, now almost shouting as Mako backed further and further away. “Mako? Mako! Okay, I’ll just … I’ll do a rooster pigeon or …”

“I’m sorry!” Mako shouted as he squeezed through a crowd of drunk dancers. He smiled mischievously and pointed to the band playing on the small stage. “I can’t hear you!”

“Rooster pigeon!” Wu yelled. “Our … our signal!”

“Sorry! Too far away! Too noisy! Can’t hear you!” Mako mouthed as he ducked into the throng of dancers.

“You know what … don’t worry … I’ll … I’ll just … sit here and … Remember: Rooster pigeon! Mako! ROOSTER PIGEON!”

Mako rolled his eyes and turned his back on Wu. He wandered around the darkened room trying his best to look casual but he was all too aware of how nervous and on edge he felt. His fingers danced unconsciously where his gun holster had been.

All the booths were full of people except one. There was only one person in the booth at the far corner, shrouded in shadow and as far from the band as was possible without sitting in the street. Mako had been a cop long enough to spot when someone was trying not to be seen. Mako tutted to himself.

“Clichéd wanker,” he mumbled under his breath. He knew Wu would love this though. He strode over and coughed loudly. The man looked up at him and scowled.

“What do you want?” he barked. His voice seemed distinctly slurred from drink but menacing nonetheless.

“Sorry to interrupt your, umm, drink, but are you …?”

“No names!” the shadowy man growled. He gestured to the decomposing seat opposite him and hiccupped. “Sit.”

Mako did as he was told. The seat groaned as he sat down and it felt distinctly sticky.

Mako fidgeted with his scarf in silence. He bit his tongue to stop himself from babbling. He always babbled when he was nervous.

They sat in uncomfortable silence for what felt like an eternity. Mako coughed again and grimaced. ‘Just my luck,’ he thought bitterly. ‘I’ll die of the flu before Kuvira’s assassins ever get us.’

“You a cop?”

Mako jolted in surprise. “What? No. Why … why would … What?!” Mako laughed nervously and cleared his throat. “No,” he said again, seriously.

“You look like a cop,” the man grunted, draining the last few dregs of his drink.

Mako folded his arms across his chest and scowled into the shadows where he guessed the man’s eyes were. “Well, I’m surprised you can even see me in this light,” he said, sardonically. “What? Did the light break after you sat down or did you turn it off to improve your ridiculous aesthetic?”

Silence again.

Mako swallowed and felt a nervous sweat rise under his collar.

The light flicked on and Mako shielded his eyes with the back of his hand.

A rumbling laughter grew louder as Mako blinked the afterglow out of his eyes and squinted at his drinking companion.

His matted charcoal-grey hair was pushed back out of his face and his dark whiskers were greased into a chisel-like point. His faded red coat was embroidered with gold on the collar and cuffs. Mako thought that it looked a lot like some of the old military uniforms he’d seen back home, although those hadn’t been mended with mismatched scraps of cloth the way this one had.

The bearded man leant forwards, the collection of jewellery around his neck jangling wildly. It was an odd assortment, Mako thought. Most were made from orange beads. Others were red and some were brown, all faded and stained by time. Some were adorned with wooden amulets, feathers, and tiny bells. Mako assumed that these were all made by space-nomads. There were other necklaces too, made from bone and ivory and cold blue crystal that glinted like ice in the erratic electric light. These necklaces, Mako was certain, were from Korra’s home world.

The man burped and thrust a large, hairy, cream-and-coffee coloured hand towards Mako. “Captain Bumi,” he said, beaming. “Though that should technically be Commander Bumi, but who gives a fuck! I am retired after all.”

Mako took the offered hand tentatively. Bumi was missing the tip of his index finger but his grip was still strong enough that it made Mako’s eyes water.

“Mako. I thought you said no names,” he said suspiciously.

Bumi made a dismissive rasping noise and leant back against the stained synthi-leather of the booth. “That’s just for show. Got to keep the … umm … the mythos going, you know.”

Mako pointed to the mass of blue fur clinging to Bumi’s shoulder. It was nibbling one of his ears and humming. “You’ve, umm, got something on your, umm …”

“Ah, that’s my little Boom Ju!” the captain laughed. “Bumi Junior. Found him stowed away on my ship after that whole thing with the hyperspace portal. Fell in love with him instantly. Look at that little face,” he cooed, pulling the fat little alien off his shoulder and placing it into his lap. Boom Ju scowled at Mako and scratched at the collar of the several-sizes-too-big pink knitted jumper it was wearing. “How could anyone not fall for this little shit?”

Bumi scratched behind his pet’s large ears and its translucent wings trembled happily.

Mako chewed his lip impatiently. “I heard you have a cargo ship.”

“A lot of people have cargo ships,” Bumi answered bluntly, his attention still firmly on the alien in his lap. Mako glared across the table. Bumi glanced up and met Mako’s eye. “You heard right,” he muttered. “So?”

“I also heard you were taking passengers.”

“Maybe.”

“And I heard that you weren’t too bothered about passports and official papers and things.”

“I could turn a blind eye,” Bumi said, raising a thick eyebrow. “For a price.”

“Well …” Mako swallowed. His throat was dry. He could have done with a drink. “That’s … great.”

“You can pay?”

“Absolutely.”

“With money?”

“… With the promise of adventure,” Mako said hopefully.

Bumi chuckled to himself, and scratched his nose.

“Maybe in my younger days, I might’ve taken you up on that offer!” Bumi laughed, a deep belly laugh that reverberated through the bar like thunder. “But there’s a war on. I’m getting old. I have a family to take … okay no, that’s not true. But still, adventure is the last thing I need.”

“I can pay you later!” Mako said desperately, almost pleadingly.

“Fuck no!” Bumi growled.

Mako slammed his hands on the table in frustration. “You don’t understand! You have to help us. This … this is …”

“Look, kid,” Bumi said, not unkindly, “I don’t know what your story is. I don’t know who you’re running from. And to be honest I don’t fuckin’ care. But …” Mako looked up expectantly, waiting for whatever sage advice this half-drunk, sorry excuse for a smuggler could possibly offer. Bumi’s face went through several different contortions as he searched for the words until he finally shrugged. “Actually no,” he said, “I _don’t_ fuckin’ care.”

Mako groaned and, swearing under his breath, let his head fall down to the chipped table top. He clenched his eyes tightly shut and pressed his forehead into the plastic.

“No need to look so glum, Mako!”

Mako sat up, opening his eyes slowly. “Wu?”

“Guess who got tequilaaaaaa!” Wu sang. He was holding about ten shot glasses, each one full to the brim. “They didn’t have any lime and they gave me a funny look when I asked if they could salt the rims.”

“Where … where did you get that?” Mako asked wearily. “We don’t have any money!”

“I told them to put it on my tab,” Wu explained, sitting down next to Mako. He was so close that he was almost sitting on Mako’s lap. “What _is_ a tab by the way? Hey, wanna do body shots?”

Mako felt himself blushing. He slid further down the seat away from Wu and pushed away the shot glass that had been offered to him. Bumi, a hungry gleam in his blue-grey eyes, took the rejected glass eagerly. He drained it one gulp.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” Wu asked.

Mako ground the heels of his palms into his eyes until the urge to throttle Wu had faded.

“Cap’n Bumi. Pleased to meet you.” It appeared the alcohol had mellowed the grumpy smuggler a little.

Mako opened his mouth to stop Wu from revealing who he was but he was too late. “Prince Wu. A pleasure,” he said, extending his hand graciously. Mako elbowed Wu in the ribs. Wu looked at him blankly before turning back to Bumi and smiling pleasantly. Mako pinched the bridge of his nose and waited for the throttling urges to fade again.

“Prince Wu? _The_ Prince Wu?” Bumi asked in disbelief.

“The very same,” Wu said smugly.

“Never heard of you.”

Wu scowled at Bumi and gulped down the contents of his glass. “Oh! That’s nasty,” he gasped. He opened his mouth, flapping cooling air onto his tongue with his hand.

Bumi chuckled to himself and downed two glasses in a row, slamming them down on the table when they were empty.

“So,” Bumi said, stroking his beard, “where are you two trying to get to?”

Mako glanced at Wu and then at Bumi. “The Republic,” he said cautiously.

“The Republic?” Wu spluttered. “You didn’t tell me we were going back to the Republic. I thought you said we should try to get to Kyoshi.”

Mako groaned and rolled his eyes so hard he was sure they were going to fall out of his skull. “We _are_ trying to get to Kyoshi,” Mako said quietly through gritted teeth. “I just didn’t want to tell this drunk asshole where we were going!”

“Oh! I thought he was gonna give us a ride.”

“Nope,” Bumi said as he finished off the last of the tequila shots. “Come back when you have some money. Then maybe I’ll be able to smuggle you two off-world.”

“Well then,” Wu said thoughtfully, “I guess we’ll have to hitchhike.”

“Or we could sell your shoes, princess.” Mako nudged Wu in the ribs and smiled at him.

Wu frowned at him. “I really don’t like it when you call me that, Mako.”

“What? It’s just a joke.” Mako wondered whether it was his imagination or whether the discordant jazz music at the other end of the tavern had really stopped playing. The drunken chatter seemed to have lulled too.

“No. You want to push me away so you try to insult me. How is ‘princess’ supposed to offend me?” Wu was gripping his empty shot glass, his knuckles white and his voice faltering a little. “What, you think that implying I’m a woman is supposed to make me feel bad? Frankly, I’m insulted that you’d think I’d be insulted.”

Mako stared in disbelief at Wu. How could this be the same person who, for the first month they’d been on the run, had been about two steps away from harassing every woman he met? Mako felt a begrudging respect for Wu developing.

“Sorry,” Mako mumbled, unfolding his arms and putting his hands palm-down on the sticky seat. Wu held his gaze, his green eyes gleaming in the flickering electric light.

Mako felt Wu’s cold fingers touch his hand. “That’s okay,” Wu said quietly. Mako felt his cheeks burning.

“Well,” Bumi said, breaking the silence, “this is almost as awkward as the time I walked in on my little sister fucking my baby brother’s girlfriend.”

“I have to go to the toilet,” Wu said. He stood up and squeezed out of the booth.

Mako got to his feet and followed Wu.

“Do you usually go to the toilet together?” Bumi asked.

There was no hint of judgement or ridicule in his voice but the question took Mako by surprise.

“What? No … yes. It’s not … we’re not …” The music and the babble of voices had started up again.

“Hey, I’m not judging. My sister’s gay. And spirits know I had my fair share of experimentation in my youth. Space can get very lonely, let me tell you! There was one time, I remember, our battalion was stranded in cannibal territory and my second-in-command and I drank cact-”

“Why are you still here?” Mako snapped.

“This is my booth!” Bumi said. “Why are _you_ still here?”

Mako opened his mouth but nothing came out. He huffed and turned around. “Come on Wu, let’s … oh no.”

“What?”

“Where’d he go? Where’s Wu?”

“He went to the bathroom.”

“ _On his own?!_ ” Mako shrieked in disbelief.

Bumi looked puzzled. “Why … why is that bad?”

Mako groaned and clenched his fists in his hair. “The last time he went to the toilet on his own, he got ambushed by five assassins!” Bumi tried to hide a laugh but failed. “It’s not funny! He could have been killed!”

“Come on, son. Sit down.” Bumi gestured to the seat opposite him and smiled a toothy grin that Mako guessed was supposed to be comforting. “He’ll be alright.”

Mako sat down reluctantly. He fiddled with the frayed edge of his scarf restlessly, glancing up at every sound, hoping to see Wu’s crooked grin. His scarred left hand and forearm itched like hell. He chewed his lip and tried to ignore it.

Bumi slid a shot glass to Mako, its amber contents sloshing over the rim onto the dirty table top.

Mako picked up the glass hesitantly. His hand felt stiff as he downed the drink. The alcohol burnt and he winced.

“So …” Bumi said, “are you his bodyguard or something like that?”

“Something like that,” Mako gasped, setting the glass down and wiping his eyes.

Bumi was about to say something else when Wu’s voice shrieked over the sound of the band.

“MAKO!”

Mako leapt to his feet, banging his knee on the table. “WU?!”

“IT HAPPENED AGAIN, MAKO!” Wu shouted, scrambling through the crowd towards Bumi’s booth. At least twelve … no, _fourteen_ heavily armed men were pouring out of the toilet and snapping like feral polar-bear dogs at Wu’s heels.

A gunshot ripped through the air, drowning out Wu’s imitation of a rooster pigeon. The crowd parted but didn’t seem particularly worried. Clearly, this wasn’t an unusual occurrence.

Bumi grabbed Mako’s sleeve and pressed a small gun into his palm. It looked like a child’s toy, small and plastic.

Mako thanked him, grabbed Wu’s hand and ran.

If he’d looked back, he would have seen Bumi smashing a half-empty bottle of something blue over one of the assassin’s heads.

They plunged into the rain-lashed darkness. The wind, funnelled through the narrow alleyways, tore at their clothes and took Mako’s breath away. They ran until his sides were on fire and then they kept running, slipping and sliding in the thick mud. Mako could barely see through the dark and the rain that shrouded the city. When he dared to glance back, however, he managed to catch a glimpse of some of their pursuers. They rounded a corner and Mako let go of Wu. “Duck!” Mako yelled over the sound of the rain and his own ragged breathing. He tackled a bewildered Wu and they collapsed into the mud. He rolled over and aimed the worryingly light gun at a patch of wall where he guessed the nearest assassin’s head would be when he turned the corner. He tried to calm his breathing and stop his scarred hand from shaking. While he waited he wondered what the range on a gun like this was.

He didn’t have to wonder for very long.

The man who careened around the corner couldn’t have been older than seventeen, Mako thought as he squeezed the trigger.

A crackling bolt of lightning-blue energy erupted from Mako’s gun. The assassin fell face down in the mud, the muzzle of his gun and the hole in his chest smoking.

“Did he shoot first?” Wu asked.

“What?” Mako snapped. He blinked the afterglow out of his eyes and staggered to his feet. “Why does it matter who shot first?”

“Are you kidding? It’s so much cooler if you shot first!”

“Get up,” Mako growled, pulling Wu to his feet. The sounds of pursuit were getting gradually louder. “Now run!”

Wu yanked Mako by the collar and pulled him into a shadowy alcove between two crumbling brick buildings.

“Quick,” Wu whispered, his breath tickling Mako’s lips. “Kiss me!”

Mako forgot to breathe for a few seconds. “W-what?”

“Public displays of affection make people uncomfortable. They won’t notice us if we’re making out.” Wu pursed his lips, closed his eyes, and leant closer to Mako.

“Are you insane?” Mako said, pushing Wu away. “That’s never going to work!”

For a second, Mako thought Wu looked almost disappointed. He dragged Wu back out into the rain, as a bullet ricocheted off the brickwork next to his head.

He shoved Wu and yelled at him to run.

Eventually the alleyway became so tight that Mako had to run behind Wu. The gap between the rickety buildings became narrower and narrower until they could barely move any more. Mako glanced back the way they had come. The hoard of assassins was having as much trouble as they were.

“I’m gonna fold you like a piece of paper!” one of them yelled.

“What does _that_ mean?!” Wu whimpered.

“Ignore him.” Mako aimed the gun at the man’s head and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. The damn thing probably had to recharge, Mako thought bitterly. He reached for his empty holster before he remembered that all his weapons were in a bucket in The Jasmine Dragon.

Mako looked around, desperately searching for something he could use as a weapon. There was nothing. No rocks or dustbin lids or pipes. Just mud and the dirt-grey wall he was getting far too intimate with. Mako slammed his fist against that wall in frustration.

A trickle of plaster dust ran down the wall, turning the mud a disgusting grey-brown.

Mako ignored the eye-watering pain in his hand and punched the wall again. The thin layer of old plaster fell away to reveal the rotting planks of wood beneath. Mako sent up a silent prayer to whoever was listening, thanking them for the decomposing shit-heap the city had become. With a kick, Mako smashed a hole in the wall that was just about big enough to squeeze through.

He pushed Wu throw the hole and followed him inside. The unfurnished, newspaper-strewn room they were inside was one of many wooden lean-to shacks built against the side of a brick-built house that had been built against a concrete apartment block that had been built against the base of one of the middle-city’s hulking skyscrapers.

Mako moved aside a sheet of corrugated steel that served as a roof and clambered out on to the top of the lean-to that was probably home to several families. He pulled Wu up after him.

They took a moment to catch their breath before jumping across the alleyway, over the heads of their would-be assassins. They scrambled across the precarious and uneven rooftops, climbing ever higher over sheets of rusting metal, tarpaulin, rotting plywood, cardboard, scraps of plastic, and spirits knew what other junk generations of people living in the shadows of the upper-cities had been forced to build their shanty-city out of.

Overhead, the colossal towers and floating platforms of the upper-cities loomed like primordial gods. The rain made the roofs even more treacherous. With every step he took, Mako was sure that the roof beneath him collapse or he would lose his footing and break his neck or fall to his death. The rain tore at them and Mako wished they hadn’t left their coats in the tavern.

It felt like they had been climbing up and up for hours when they eventually ran out of roof. Mako looked down over the precipice before them, down into the darkness.

An ear-splitting gunshot.

A blinding burst of a muzzle flare.

The acrid smell of smoke and gunpowder.

Wu stumbled and fell to his knees as a plume of blood erupted from his shoulder.

Mako caught Wu in his arms and pulled him to his feet. He didn’t even look to see who had fired the shot. He wiped a streak of mud from Wu’s cheek with his thumb and hugged him close.

“Do you trust me?!” Mako whispered, barely audible over the sound of rain drumming on concrete.

Wu looked up at him and held his gaze. His eyes were brimming with tears and seemed to shine in the darkness.

“Yes,” Wu said quietly, his fingers coiling in Mako’s.

Mako edged closer to where the rooftop fell away into the void, never taking his eyes off Wu’s.

“Then jump!”


	2. Chapter 2

Mako’s lungs were screaming. When they’d fallen, he had hit the water with such force that his breath had been knocked out of him. He was running on empty.

It felt like cruel, resentful hands were clawing at his clothes, pulling him down, making his every movement a struggle. He could feel his grasp on Wu slipping. The cold was sapping his strength and making his fingers stiff and numb.

The water stung when he tried opening his eyes. He thought he saw a faint shimmering of light above him before he had to shut his eyes again, clenching them tightly shut against the freezing, polluted water.

His legs were hurting. Or at least they would have been if he could feel them.

He felt a scream rising in his throat and fought it with every fibre of his being. The burgeoning scream that reverberated in the back of his throat and in his painful chest grew louder and louder. Lungs burning and his thoughts becoming as slow and clouded as his muscles, Mako opened his mouth and screamed.

His mouth and nose filled with foul tasting water and for a moment he was convinced it was all over, when suddenly his head broke the surface and he coughed up a lungful of black water.

It was all he could do to keep his mouth above the water. He coughed and spluttered as it crept back into his mouth and nose, his eyes and ears.

Mako wrapped his arms around Wu’s chest and pulled his head above the surface, kicking furiously with his legs.

“Come on,” he coughed, patting Wu’s cheek with his palm. “Wu! Wake up! Come on. You’re okay. You’re okay.” His voice sounded muffled and distant. It must have been the water in his ears, he thought. He patted his cheek again and gave him an awkward squeeze that, in any other situation, may have been a hug. “Wu?”

Wu didn’t stir.

Mako felt the first gut-rotting hints of panic welling up. That was the last thing he should do. He had to remember his training. That was easier said than done.

Mako tried to breathe calmly and slowly, which as it turned out, was next to impossible after nearly drowning and freezing to death.

He swept the sodden hair out of his face and found his hand was stained with red. Mako counted his breaths and imagined the sound of the ocean. After one or two breaths he decided that, considering his present situation, no one would blame him if he thought the ocean could go fuck itself.

He pulled Wu closer and tried to see if he was breathing.

“We’re going to be okay, buddy,” he said breathlessly, his lips brushing Wu’s ear. “We’re gonna be okay.”

The rain pelting the surface of the water eased up for a moment and Mako was able to peer through the darkness.

As far as he could tell, the dark expanse of foul-smelling water they had landed in and that he had seen shimmering from the roof of the huge, crumbling apartment block, was a river or canal that ran between the roots of the middle-city’s gargantuan, gleaming skyscrapers.

Mako wondered whether he should just wait for the current to carry them to safety. He quickly dismissed the idea. Ba Sing Se’s waterways were notorious for plunging deep underground at a moment’s notice or over sheer drops or smashing into the feet of skyscrapers. Not to mention all the toxic shit that was pumped out into the rivers by the factories and ‘scrapers.

And anyway, judging by the smell, this particular river had been stagnant for years.

Over the decades, the river had become narrower and narrower as the residents of the city, fighting and competing for every possible scrap of space like algae in an overshadowed pond, had begun encroaching on the waterway. The buildings along its banks had gradually expanded outwards, laying down foundations in the riverbed, overhanging and putting out thirsty roots like concrete willow trees. Then squat, ugly, insect-like structures on huge concrete stilts had popped up in the water itself until this stretch of the river had become cut off. Recently, the river had corrected its course around this cluster of development, flooding several miles of the city in the process, leaving behind this vestigial lake that only became a river when a hurricane hit. All of this had turned the water dark and stagnant. Mako shuddered to think just how many of these waterfront homes emptied their sewage straight into this river.

Railway bridges and footways of metal and concrete and tires and rope crisscrossed the water and the sky, connecting the riverbank with the concrete islands. Like the river, even the bridges were decked with shacks and hovels of their own.

A train rattled past overhead, its light illuminating the water for a few seconds at a time as the train rushed past the clusters of shacks clinging to the bridge like barnacles. In the fleeting flashes, Mako thought he could see what looked like tiny sheds made of rotting plywood and cardboard floating on the water, balancing on rafts of lashed-together oil drums and wooden pallets.

Mako swam towards one of these tiny floating islands of jetsam. He went slowly, partly because he had to make sure Wu’s head stayed above water and partly because he was afraid if he went too quickly, he would give himself a coronary.

Finally reaching the closest one, he gripped a half-submerged oil drum and stopped to catch his breath. It was almost ten minutes before he had enough strength to pull himself up onto the precarious raft, and another five more before he even attempted pulling Wu up too.

He laid Wu gently down on the raft and pushed the sudden hair out of his eyes. It was really getting too long. Another train shot past, roaring like a caged animal, and in the light Mako caught a glimpse of the watery blood spreading across Wu’s shoulder and mingling with the puddles on the raft.

Mako took his scarf off, rung the water out, and tied it around Wu’s gunshot wound as gently as he could.

Wu still wasn’t awake.

With trembling fingers, Mako pulled Wu’s collar open and tried to find his pulse. He couldn’t feel anything. That might have had more to do with the cold than with Wu’s heart rate. Mako _prayed_ that it had more to do with the cold than with Wu’s heart rate.

Mako wondered whether he was supposed to give him the kiss of life.

“Should I … Am I supposed to give you the kiss of life?” Mako asked Wu’s unconscious and hopefully not dead body. There was no answer. Of course there was no answer. Mako wasn’t sure why he’d asked.

He tilted Wu’s head back, opened his mouth slightly, his thumb lingering perhaps a little too long on Wu’s soft lower lip, and took a deep breath. His hands were shaking, though he supposed that was from the cold. _Definitely_ from the cold.

He licked his lips unconsciously and leant down, a hand gently touching Wu’s neck. To feel his pulse, Mako told himself.

Just as his lips were about to touch Wu’s, there was a waterlogged cough and Mako’s face was suddenly splashed with water.

“S- sorry!” Wu spluttered, his body shaking with coughs.

Mako blinked the water out of his eyes and smiled wearily. He wasn’t sure, but that was quite possibly the first time Wu had ever said ‘sorry’ before. Possibly the first time in his entire life.

“That’s okay.” He was still leaning over Wu, practically straddling him. It may have just been because he was struggling to breathe, but Wu's cheeks were quite distinctly flushed.

“Y- you can … still give me the … k- kiss …” He coughed so hard he couldn’t breathe and turned purple. “… Of life!” he wheezed.

“Were you awake this whole time?” Mako snapped, sitting up.

Wu tried to say something, but he made a guttural swallowing noise instead. He made a strange face, rolled over clumsily, almost falling off the raft and giving Mako an aneurysm, and threw up into the water.

“Am I gonna die, Mako?” Wu whined, his head dangling dangerously close to the water.

“Probably,” Mako said, voice devoid of emotion.

“Really?” Wu asked, voice breaking.

“No,” Mako sighed, rubbing Wu’s back. “No, you’re going to be fine.”

“Mako?”

“Yes?”

“Carry me?”

Mako sighed. “Okay.”

When he was absolutely certain that Wu had finished being violently sick, Mako gently scooped him up into his arms and hopped over onto the next raft. This one was made of empty water bottles - the big kind that businessmen-and-women gossip around - and tipped frighteningly as Mako stepped onto it.

An arm draped around Mako’s neck, Wu was suspiciously quiet as they made their way across the water towards one of the concrete stilt-blocks. By the time they reached relatively solid ground, he had drifted off into a restless sleep.

His quiet breath tickled Mako’s cheek. He allowed himself a little flicker of a smile and climbed over a pile of sodden cardboard that someone had evidently left out on the concrete to dry.

The doors to the apartment block were thick and sturdy looking so it was a good thing that they were both a few yards away, half submerged in the muddy river.

The foyer was illuminated by a single, flickering fluorescent tube that buzzed and clicked like a fridge full of cockroaches (something which, incidentally, is not an uncommon sight in Ba Sing Se’s under-city). The tiled floor was covered in puddles. Rainwater was seeping down through the ceiling and river water was seeping up through the floor.

Mako looked around desperately. His arms were about to give in and his hands were wet and slippery with Wu’s blood. All the flats on the ground floor (Mako wondered if you could call it the ground floor if you were in the middle of a river and only a matter of inches above the water) were securely bolted shut behind very sturdy-looking metal-barred security gates. The recess under the stairs was small and littered with needles and broken glass. More importantly, even if Wu survived the night, he would almost certainly die if he realised he had slept under there.

Gritting his teeth and taking a deep breath, Mako clambered slowly up the stairs. A trail of dirty water splashed with red followed them up the concrete stairs and onto the first floor landing.

Mako slumped against a wall and shifted Wu in his arms, trying desperately not to drop him.

It took every iota of his willpower not to drop to the floor and fall asleep. Groaning, he pushed himself off the wall and staggered a few paces down the corridor. Just like on the floor below, every door was securely shut and barricaded against intruders.

All except one.

The door two from the end of the corridor was standing half open, its security gate was bent and broken, propped up against the wall. Yellow tape was strung across the doorway like a plastic spider web, fluttering in the breeze that was drifting in through the open door and the broken windows.

Mako stood in front of the doorway, looking at the tape.

In big bold letters, the words CRIME SCENE – DO NOT CROSS were repeated over and over on the tape, forbidding entry.

Mako chewed his lip.

“Well,” he said to himself, “I am technically a cop.”

He swatted the tape away and used Wu’s head to carefully push the door open.

The room he found himself in was small, but that was to be expected in the under-city. The only things in the under-city that weren’t small were the rats. There was a sofa in the middle of the room facing the space where a holo-set might once have sat. Mako kicked the door shut and laid Wu carefully down on the sofa, looked down at him for a few moments, and tried to find the light switch.

The lights snapped on and Mako had a quick look around, making sure they were alone and that they had at least one way other than the door through which they could escape if they had to. There were two windows they could get out through and apart from some cheese in a cupboard that Mako thought might have become sentient, they were completely alone.

There was a small kitchenette in one corner, a foldaway bed that Mako couldn't work out how to unfold, a bathroom the size of a shoebox, and two very large blood stains on the wall at roughly head height.

The lock on the door was broken, the wood itself was splintered and cracked. Mako dragged the small fridge across the blue lino floor and wedged it up against the door.

He pulled off his waterlogged jacket and ran his hands under the bathroom tap. After rummaging through the cupboards and wardrobes, he eventually found a dish cloth that seemed relatively clean and a bed sheet he didn’t think anyone would miss.

There was a blanket draped over the back of the sofa which Mako folded up and placed under Wu’s head. He stroked a few sodden curls out of Wu’s face and crouched down beside him.

He was unbuttoning Wu’s damp, blood-stained shirt when his eyes fluttered open.

“Whoa!” Wu said, doing his best to sit up, eyes still only half open and trying to bat Mako’s hands away. “At least buy me a drink first.”

“I did buy you a drink.”

“Did you?” Wu’s eyes darted back and forth, visibly churning through his memories. “Oh yeah. Okay.” He waved his hand imperiously. “Continue.”

Mako undid half the buttons and slipped the shirt off his shoulder. It was sticky with half-congealed blood and came away from his skin with a sound that would set your teeth on edge.

Mako inspected the wound carefully. The bullet had just clipped him but had gouged a chunk out of his shoulder. An inch or so to the side and Wu’s shoulder would very likely have been smashed to pieces. Mako didn’t think any major arteries or muscles or nerves had been hit. He was more worried about infection from the river. There wasn’t much he could do about that though. All he could do for now was stop the bleeding.

Wu probably needed stitches too. Mako had no problem doing that himself. He’d stitched Korra back together spirits-only-knew how many times. He didn’t have anything to stitch the wound with though.

“It’s just a flesh wound,” he said, folding the dish cloth into a compact rectangle.

“All wounds are flesh wounds,” Wu mumbled.

“I suppose they are,” Mako said as he undid the rest of the buttons and pulled the ruined and probably rather expensive shirt off.

“Well … this is embarrassing,” Wu said, his speech slurring a little. “I haven’t worked-out in months! Look at that.” He prodded his soft belly with a forefinger and made a noise like a deflating balloon. “Maybe you should take your shirt off too … then … then it won’t be so awkward.”

“It’s not awkward,” Mako said, pressing the dish cloth over the wound. “Am I … Tell me if it hurts.”

“Mako … sweetie pie …” Wu said condescendingly. “I’ve been shot … of course it fucking hurts.”

Mako wasn’t sure, but he thought he probably preferred ‘sweetie pie’ to the plethora of awful nicknames Wu had bombarded him with over the last few months.

“I meant … I don’t want to hurt you any more than you …” He cleared his throat. “Tell me if I press too hard, okay?”

Wu nodded, his head lolling drunkenly. “Shouldn’t I go to a hospital?”

Mako shook his head. “That’s the last thing we want to do. They’re bound to find us if we go to a hospital.”

“Okay,” Wu said sleepily. “I’ve never … never liked … hospitals … anyway …”

“The first time I was ever shot,” Mako said, hoping that the sound of his voice might help keep Wu awake, “I went into shock. It was only a small wound. Probably smaller than yours. Got me right here,” he said, running his finger along the side of Wu’s ribcage. “It hurt like hell and I went into shock. I collapsed. I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was dying. I almost got my squad killed.”

“I haven’t gone into shock,” Wu said, half proud and half puzzled.

“No. No, you haven’t. We’ll make a soldier out of you yet,” Mako said, cringing at how stupid he sounded.

Wu didn’t seem to think he sounded stupid though. He beamed Mako and whispered, “Really?”

Mako nodded and cautiously took the dish cloth away. It was stained red but the bleeding seemed to have ebbed slightly. He tore the bed sheet into long strips and wrapped them around Wu’s chest, under his arm and over the wounded shoulder.

“Too tight?” Mako asked.

Wu took a deep breath, filling his chest experimentally. “Nope.”

“Good.” Mako took the blanket, shook it out, and draped it around Wu’s shoulders.

Wu sniffed and stretched himself out on the stained sofa, lying on his uninjured right shoulder.

Mako got to his feet, stretched, felt his joints complaining loudly and wandered over to the window. He lifted the blind a little and looked out at the night. The rain was hammering against the window pane and every light in the city was caught in the droplets clinging to the glass like stars. Mako could almost believe he was back in space, back on board Raava. The apartment certainly smelt as bad as Raava did.

He found himself missing Korra. Not as a lover. But as a friend. His breath fogged the glass and he wondered if, one day, they would ever meet again. He hoped they would, though he didn’t doubt that he’d be greeted with a broken nose.

He smiled a little and drew a smiley face into the condensation. He missed his brother. He would have given anything to see Bolin’s idiotic grin one more time.

Mako rubbed at something in his eye with a scarred knuckle and let the blind fall back into place. Hands on his hips, he sighed and thought about sleep. He still had no idea how to unfold the bed.

“I’ll go out tomorrow,” he said quietly. “I’ll see if I can find some proper dressing. Antibiotics. Something to stitch you up with. Food too.” Wu hummed his approval. “Do you want me to turn the light off?” Wu nodded.

Mako tiptoed over to the light switch and plunged the cramped apartment into darkness.

“Mako?”

“Yes?”

“Spoon me,” Wu said, plaintively.

Mako sighed and rubbed his forehead on the back off his hand wearily.

“Okay.”

He clambered carefully onto the sofa behind Wu and draped an arm around him. His nose brushed against the back of Wu’s neck. Mako closed his eyes and listened to the sound of Wu’s breathing.

Wu shuffled his body about a bit, trying to get comfortable. His wiggling hips rubbed up against Mako’s crotch.

“Stop wriggling.”

“Sorry.” Just when he thought Wu had fallen asleep, a voice whispered out of the darkness, “Mako?”

"Yes?" Mako asked, exasperated.

"You smell really bad."

"I know."

Just as Mako was beginning to drift off to sleep, there was another quiet, "Makooo?"

“Go to sleep,” he muttered.

“Is this the part where you tell me your tragic backstory?” Wu’s hushed voice asked.

Mako rolled his eyes. “I don’t have a tragic backstory,” he whispered.

“Please? We’ve known each other for months now. You’re … you’re the best friend I’ve ever had. And I know next to nothing about you.”

“That’s probably because you’ve never asked.”

There was a pause. Wu’s fingers touched the scarred hand draped around him. “I’m asking now,” he said quietly, almost apologetically.

Mako sighed.

“My parents died when I was young. My brother was even younger. We … I dunno, I guess we slipped through the system and we ended up on the streets. I took care of him. I did what I had to do to survive and look after my little brother. We … we ended up in some deep shit and … I fucked up and we got separated. I went back and forth between foster homes and juvie and the streets. Somewhere along the way I ended up pulling myself together and joining the police. I did pretty well, I suppose. I knew the streets. I knew the people. I had a great mentor and met a great woman who … who I loved and …” Mako’s voice failed him and he was quiet for a while. “It didn’t last. And now Kuvira has my home in a death grip while I’m trapped on this shit heap of a planet.”

"Did you ever find your brother again?"

"No."

“But ... you have me though,” Wu said.

Mako smiled a little bit. “Yeah. Yeah, I suppose I do.” He pulled Wu closer and squeezed his hand.

There was a loud sniff that made Mako jump out of his skin.

“That was the saddest story I’ve ever heard,” Wu whispered, voice choked with emotion.

“Are you crying?!” Mako asked, almost laughing. There was no answer. “Are you asleep?”

“Yes.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty sure only about three and a half people are reading this, most of whom are friends who feel obligated to read, but I am having so much fun writing this! When will these two idiots just fricking kiss already?! I don't know! Soon, I hope.

Mako frowned at his reflection and a pair of tired amber-gold eyes frowned back.

He dragged a hand down his face and groaned quietly so as not to wake Wu. Maybe it was the thick stubble that made him look so much older. Maybe it was the dark rings under his eyes, or his gaunt cheeks. It might have just been the weak, smoke-grey morning light trickling through the blinds.

Maybe sleeping in damp clothes on a rock-hard sofa had something to do with it.

He pulled a face at the rust-flecked mirror, and squinted. He was definitely looking older. He ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it out of his face, and looked at the cracked bathroom sink despondently. His toothbrush was in his rucksack in The Jasmine Dragon and his mouth didn’t quite feel disgusting enough to risk using the toothbrush he’d found in the mildewy mug on the sink. Instead, he pulled the lid off a half-empty bottle of mouthwash and filled his mouth with the bright blue liquid.

He scratched his jaw as he sloshed the mouthwash around and decided that he really needed to get around to having a shave.

Poking his head around the bathroom door, Mako checked to see if Wu was awake yet. He wasn’t. Wu was still stretched out on the sofa, the blanket wrapped around him like a cocoon.

Mako spat the mouthwash out into the sink and began peeling off his clothes. He really wished he’d taken them off before he’d gone to sleep last night. They were damp and stunk of river water and spirits-knew what else. They clung to him, reluctant to let him go and his arms were sore and just as reluctant to do anything.

He sat on the side of the bath in his boxers and vest and tugged at his socks. They came off eventually, but not before he’d seriously considered having his shower with them on. Socks finally off, he pulled out the thin wad of damp bank notes that he’d hidden in them. He wrung his waterlogged socks out into the tub, draped them over the radiator, and sat the roll of money next to them.

The radiator was stone cold. He fiddled with the dial and, when nothing happened, he gave the radiator a kick. There was a loud, rumbling gurgle. After a minute or so, a faint heat began to creep into the radiator and he sighed.

The muscles and sinews in his arms complaining indignantly, he pulled off his underwear and stepped into the bathtub. He whisked the mouldy curtain closed and looked at the showerhead dubiously. It was encrusted with limescale and rust. He turned the faucet cautiously, tensing his sore body, more than half expecting to be doused in raw sewage.

There was a rattling and a groaning that echoed throughout the entire building. The plumbing’s death-rattle reached a crescendo and a sputtering jet of lukewarm water hit him in the chest. He splashed the water into his face and did his best to wash his hair with a sliver of soap he’d found, which wasn’t easy seeing as he was a good half-foot taller than the showerhead.

He let the water wash over his skin. He liked to think he could feel his tension melting away but that was far from the truth.

Feeling a little less like he’d crawled through a sewer and been buried under a ton of bricks, Mako turned off the shower and climbed out of the tub, dripping.

“Oh!” Wu gasped, his toothbrush still in his mouth.

Mako jumped out of his skin and grasped the shower curtain, trying his best to cover his privates.

“You almost gave me a heart attack!” Mako gasped, shuffling uncomfortably and looking up at the damp-stained ceiling in exasperation.

A dribble of frothy toothpaste ran down Wu’s chin. His eyes were still fixed on Mako. He pointed vaguely at Mako’s body and chewed his toothbrush.

“Oh … oh …” He swallowed audibly, almost choking on his toothpaste. “Your … your hips do the, umm, the V-shape thing. Tha’s cool.” He tugged the blanket around his shoulders a little to hide his stomach. “Me too.”

Mako laughed embarrassedly and apologised. Wu’s eyebrows raised a little but that was the only indication he was listening. A droplet of his toothpaste landed with a _plat_ on the floor. Mako sighed, relaxing a little but still averting his eyes even though he was the one who was naked.

“Can you pass me a … umm …?” he mumbled, gesturing at the towel near the sink. He could feel his cheeks burning.

It took Wu a while to process Mako’s words. “The …? Oh, the towel!” He turned around, spat out his mouthful of toothpaste, and threw Mako the towel. “Most important thing to have on the run. A clean towel.”

Mako tied the towel around his waist as quickly as he could, his fingers fumbling clumsily.

“Whose toothbrush is that?” Mako asked. “You didn’t use the one on the sink did you?”

Wu shook his head and made a noise that sounded like, “Fuck no.”

Mako scratched the back of his neck and sighed. “You can turn around.”

Wu spat into the sink again and turned around. “Nope. This is mine. I always keep my toothbrush in my jacket. Why? Where’s yours?”

Mako mumbled something and pretended to be checking to see whether his socks were dry yet. They weren’t.

“What was that?”

“I said, it’s in my rucksack.” Mako scratched his jaw. “In the tavern.”

“Oh!” Wu looked guiltily at his toothbrush. “I was supposed to be looking after our bags.”

“It’s okay,” Mako said.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Wu said, forcing a grin, “my toothbrush went into that river with me and it tastes distinctly sewagey.”

Mako laughed quietly through his nose.

The puddle at Mako’s feet was growing steadily bigger and bigger and he was beginning to shiver.

“I’ll … uh …” he mumbled, edging towards the door.

“Is that where you were shot that first time?” Wu asked, pointing his frothy toothbrush at Mako’s ribs.

Mako looked down at his chest, lifted his arm a little, and found the faint, pink mark that ran a few inches across his side. “Uh … yeah. Yeah. How’s your shoulder?”

“Hurts,” Wu said around the toothbrush.

“I’ll …” Mako looked around awkwardly. “I’ll get dressed and then I’ll change the bandages for you, okay?”

Wu spat into the sink and rinsed his brush. “Okay.”

Mako rubbed his itchy jaw, nodded, and slipped out of the bathroom, closing it quietly behind him. It was only then that he realised he’d left all his clothes scattered across the bathroom floor.

“You should shave,” Wu said through the door.

Mako kicked a pile of clothes that were strewn across the floor near the un-unfolding bed. “Huh?”

“Your stubble. It’s annoying you. You should shave it. I think it suits you, but you keep scratching at it.” Wu poked his head around the door. “Has anyone ever told you that you’d look great with a beard?”

“My, uh, my electric razor was in my rucksack. And the batteries died a couple of weeks ago anyway.”

“There’s some foam and a razor behind the mirror in here. Put some trousers on and I’ll shave it for you.”

Mako pulled the towel tighter around himself and fought the urge to scratch his face. “It’s okay. It’s sweet of you, but …” He gave in and scratched his neck. “What the hell,” he whispered. “Okay. Thanks.”

Wu smiled and his head vanished behind the door. “Your clothes stink by the way.”

Wu didn’t smell any better but Mako didn’t have the heart to tell him that. Instead, he asked with a grin, “Why are you smelling my clothes?”

“Grab something from that pile by the bed.”

Clutching his towel, Mako rifled through the clothes. They were all several sizes too big for him. He pulled on underwear, tried not to wonder whether they were clean, and grey jeans that hung baggily around his ankles. He tightened the belt as far as he could and prayed he wouldn’t have to run any time soon.

He couldn’t find any socks and didn’t like the look of any of the t-shirts so pulled on a loose fitting grey-green jumper that only had a few holes. He rolled the sleeves up to his elbows and sighed. If he put his jacket on then he wouldn’t be able to see the mottled dirty-pink and red scars that the fire had etched into his forearm all those years ago. What was it by now? Three years? Three and a half?

“Sit on the edge of the bath,” Wu said when he went back into the closet-sized bathroom and had splashed his face with water. Wu sat himself down on the toilet, brandishing a plastic disposable razor. Mako did as he was told and scowled at nothing and everything. “I can tidy up your bikini region too if you want,” Wu said, smiling broadly.

Mako gave him a weary, sideways look and ran his tongue over his teeth.

Wu’s left hand was stiff so Mako squirted a dollop of the foam into his hand for him. He wasn’t entirely sure why Wu had to apply the foam himself but, for the moment, he was more worried about his hand.

“It’s okay,” Wu insisted, recognising the frown on Mako’s face as he got to his feet. “I just slept on it funny.”

“No you didn’t. You have a gunshot wound in that shoulder. You didn’t sleep on that side at all.”

“Keep talking and I’ll cut you!” Wu said threateningly, waving the razor in front of Mako’s face.

Mako held his hands up in weary surrender.

A flurry of tingles ran down his spine as Wu spread the cold foam across his cheeks, jaw, and neck. When he was done, Wu wiped his hand on Mako’s threadbare jumper.

“Hey!” Mako snapped, trying to rub the white smears off his shoulder. More than anything else, he was concerned that the jumper didn’t belong to him.

Wu grinned playfully. Mako huffed, sending specks of foam flying through the air. Mako’s frown only made Wu’s smile bigger.

With a gentle hand under his chin, Wu tilted Mako’s head back and the blade glided over his skin. The sound of the razor and the foam, not to mention Wu’s careful, attentive fingers, sent shivers through Mako that felt like tiny fingers of electricity dancing over his scalp, pooling at the base of his spine, and climbing up his shins.

He swallowed awkwardly and tried to find something to look at other than the lip Wu was holding between his teeth, deep in concentration. Mako was still holding the can of foam and he fiddled with it self-consciously, tapping a bare foot on the floor to an imaginary, discordant tune.

Wu groaned in disgust and shook the razor vigorously. “These C-Corp razors are so shit!” He ran it under the tap for a few minutes, rambling about the razors his barber back in the Republic had used. Mako wasn’t listening but he nodded along, raising his eyebrows in attentive disbelief every so often.

The razor now mostly unclogged, Wu followed the sharp edge of Mako’s jaw carefully, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth.

“Go like this,” he said, sticking out his chin and pushing his bottom lip forwards with his tongue. Mako did as he was told.

After a little while, Mako shifted his body, moving his head to the side away from Wu’s hand slightly. It wasn’t so much that he was particularly uncomfortable. It was quite the opposite. He just wasn’t used to this level of attention. He didn’t know how he was supposed to react.

Wu was far from impressed. “Sit still,” he said, a harsh edge to his voice. Mako couldn’t help but smile a little. It was not often that Wu reprimanded him. Wu paused and looked down at him, his thick eyebrows furrowing. “What?”

“Nothing,” Mako whispered, fighting his smile. Wu’s eyes narrowed at Mako suspiciously, as though he were the butt of a joke he didn’t understand. “Are you done?”

“Not yet. It’d go faster if you just sat still. I’ll cut a main artery and kill you if you’re not careful. Then who’d protect me, huh? I’ll be so pissed at you if I die because I cut your throat.”

Mako blinked slowly, sighing. “Okay. Fine,” he mumbled. “Sorry.”

“Have you ever thought about growing a beard?” Wu asked as he scraped away at the last patches of foam clinging to Mako’s throat. “I’m sure it’d stop itching once it got long enough. Though I don’t think a big spaceship-captain beard would suit you. I just mean, like, a nice trim beard, y’know. Just long enough to tickle a girl’s thighs. Or … a guy’s thighs?” Wu raised his eyebrows, looking down at Mako expectantly as if there’d been a very important question hidden in those four words.

Mako didn’t say anything. He was keeping as still as possible. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Wu with a sharp blade against his throat. It was just that he didn’t trust Wu with a sharp blade against his throat.

Wu seemed to approve of Mako’s non-answer, smiling a little to himself as he turned his attention back to Mako’s stubble.

Much to Mako’s surprise, Wu finished without leaving him a bleeding mess on the bathroom floor.

Wu wiped the last vestiges of foam off his face and Mako ran his fingertips along his jaw and down his neck experimentally. “Not bad,” he admitted as Wu washed the razor under the tap and sat himself down on the edge of the sink.

Wu beamed, visibly swelling with pride. Mako got to his feet and pushed his damp hair out of his face.

“I need a haircut,” Mako groaned.

Wu’s eyes widened in horror. “Don’t you dare!” he gasped. “Y-you just need some product.” He leapt off the sink and ran his fingers through Mako’s hair, squinting critically. “Maybe a trim. An undercut maybe … short at the sides and back … just …” he took a deep breath, “… don’t you dare ruin this sexy hobo look.”

Mako could feel his cheeks burning and he gently pushed Wu away and ran his hand through his hair again, messing up Wu’s attempts at styling.

“It’s annoying,” Mako sighed.

“Your face is annoying.”

Mako rolled his eyes, grabbed his socks and the money from the radiator and left the bathroom.

Wu followed him and perched himself on the edge of the sofa as Mako tore another strip from the bed sheet.

“Are you going to be okay on your own for an hour or two,” Mako asked as he changed Wu’s bandages.

Wu winced a little and shrugged. “Yeah. I’ll probably die of boredom, but whatever. Where are you going?”

“I told you yesterday.”

“I’d just been shot and jumped off a hundred-storey block of flats into a river of shit. Forgive me if I wasn’t listening!”

“It was fifty storeys at most.” It was nowhere near fifty stories but Mako knew not to get facts involved in Wu’s exaggeration.

“I nearly died!”

Mako sighed, draped the blanket back around Wu’s shoulders, and pushed his foot into a damp sock. “I’m going to get some proper dressing for your wound. I need something to sew it up with too. You started bleeding again in the night. There’s blood all over the sofa. And you need some kind of anti-bacterial. Do you … do you need any painkillers or …?” Wu shook his head. “I’ll get some food too.”

Wu’s eyes lit up at the mention of food. “Oh! I think there’s a kebab place not far from here.”

“No street meat,” Mako said in a tone that brokered no argument. There was no way he was going to let Wu die of food poisoning after all they’d been through in the last twenty-four hours alone.

“I’m sick of plastic-wrapped junk food and chocolate bars,” Wu whined. “It’s no good for my complexion. Look! I’m practically covered in zits!”

“You’re not. And junk food’s the only thing you know is safe. It’s the first rule of surviving on the streets.”

“What’s the second rule?” Wu asked, grinning cheekily.

“Same as the first. No street meat.” Mako reached for his shoes and began lacing them up, ignoring the swampy feeling around his toes. “And how are kebabs going to improve your diet?”

Wu shrugged his surrender and folded his arms sulkily. “How are you going to pay for all this?” Mako pointed at the roll of money sitting on the arm of the sofa. “And if they won’t take Republic money?”

Mako shrugged. “I guess I’ll have to get a job.”

Wu sunk back into the sofa as Mako pulled on his jacket and stuffed the money into his pocket. He’d already searched the pockets of his borrowed jeans and the rest of the apartment for any Earth Empire money but all he had found was an out of date condom, a few cigarettes he had no intention of smoking, and a lot of lint.

“Hey,” Wu said, beckoning Mako over. Mako sighed and edged over to the sofa, leaning down slightly. “You’ve got some …” Wu reached up and wiped a fleck of shaving foam from Mako’s ear. “There. You’re good.”

Mako held Wu’s gaze for a few seconds and, when he realised he was blushing, he grabbed his scarf and strode over to the door.

“Put the fridge back in front of the door after I’m gone,” Mako said as he wrapped his scarf around his neck.

“Uh-huh.”

“Don’t let anyone in unless it’s me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“If I’m not back by the time it’s dark then …” Mako trailed off and Wu turned around, looking questioningly at him. Mako had no idea what he should do if something happened. “Don’t get yourself killed,” Mako mumbled as he moved the fridge away from the door.

“Okay,” Wu said quietly.

Mako stepped over the threshold, swatting a piece of yellow crime scene tape aside. As he was closing the door, he stopped and looked back into the cramped apartment.

“Wu … umm.” Mako rubbed his smooth jaw. “Thanks.”

Wu had been looking a little pale and haggard that morning, but as he returned Mako’s shy smile, a faint flush of colour crept into his cinnamon cheeks.

Mako followed the trail of dried blood and dirty water down the corridor, down the stairs, and out onto the narrow concrete jetty. For the first time in weeks, it wasn’t raining. Mako stepped out onto the waterfront and looked up at the iron-grey sky. A train rumbled overhead. Or maybe it was thunder. He closed his eyes, basking in the few diluted rays of cold sunlight that were managing to creep through the smog and the smoke, and revelled in the faint breeze washing over his now clean-shaven face.

Walking slowly, his joints stiff and his muscles aching, Mako made his way along a bridge of tires to the river bank. Or, at least, where he supposed the river bank was.

Dark, frothy water lapped between the chaotic avalanche of buildings lining the river and, as he walked towards the sounds of traffic, he could still hear water licking and lapping against concrete beneath him, though he couldn’t see it. Soon the sounds of water were swallowed by the cacophony of trains, music, and market stalls. For all he knew, the street he was trying not to get run over on, was sitting on top of the river.

Away from the river and walking between the overhanging buildings that lined the street, only a small sliver of the darkly pallid, smoke-stained sky was visible. On the busy street, the perpetual half-gloom of the under-city was kept at bay by the neon twilight of flickering shop signs and billboards, reflected endlessly in windows and puddles. Lanterns in New Earth Empire colours, both electric and paper, were strung across the narrow street on cords and wires and trembled on the breeze. The smell of sewage of stale river water was still there, but now it was buried deep beneath the sweet smells of spices and alcohol, meat cooking and fruit rotting.

Illuminated billboards on top of squat concrete buildings told him that he just _had_ to try the new-and-improved C-Corp Cola and posters stuck to shop windows reminded him that the Great Uniter wanted _you_ to work for the glory of the New Earth Empire and discarded fliers trodden into the muddy asphalt by thousands of feet and tires asked if he wanted to save a _whole_ ten percent the next time he travelled with C-Corp Rail and rain-spattered ads on the sides of buses told him that by purchasing special boxes of C-Corp sugar-free cereal he would be supporting our brave troops as they fought to rebuild the Empire.

Mako let himself be carried along like flotsam in the torrent of the crowd, but he made sure to keep a nearby middle-city tower on his left the whole time so he wouldn’t get lost.

Like most of its kind, the tower was huge, at least half a mile wide and so tall it vanished into the thick clouds above his head. Monstrous, root-like pipes the size of apartment blocks burrowed down into the under-city at its base giving it the appearance of a petrified, age-blackened tree. High above the favelas that climbed like ivy up the bottom of the tower were enormous holo-ads that flickered and flashed in the clouds of mist.

If Mako had really strained, near where the tower met the low-hanging clouds, he might have just about been able to make out the lights of the apartments, offices, shops, casinos, restaurants, schools, hospitals, gardens and parks, pools, and laboratories in the tower, gleaming like stars in its pitch-black edifice.

There were no windows any lower than that.

No one living in the middle-city wanted to think about the under-city, let alone see it.

Sometimes, during one of the clear summer’s days that occasionally graced patches of the global city, the people in the middle-city’s enormous towers would look down from their comfortable air-conditioned offices and say to their co-workers that the under-city looked almost beautiful, like a shimmering sea of concrete and metal in the sun and that they should really explore it one day. There was bound to be a quaint little bar or something they could go to, someone would say. Maybe they could even buy it and renovate it. They had the money, after all! They would all smile and sigh appreciatively for a few minutes. They’d make some vague plans, argue good-naturedly over names for bars, crack some jokes about the under-dwellers, and then forget about it.

Of course, up in the clouds and behind their reinforced glass and metal, they couldn’t smell the rancid under-city rotting in the summer heat, drowning in the middle-city’s sewage and stifled by its shadows. On most days, when the rain and the layers of smoke and cloud were too thick to see more than a few yards, the residents of the middle-city were spared the sight of the poverty and filth at their feet.

That was the way they liked it.

Mako kept his head down and his hands thrust into the deep pockets of his jacket as he walked. After only twenty minutes of walking, he’d been accosted by people trying to sell him food, magazines, stolen televisions, sex, drugs, and even fake passports that would allow him onto the trains up to the middle-city and, for a small extra fee, all way to the upper-city.

He ignored their insults and their pleas and, on more than one occasion, their spit, and kept walking. His face felt cold without the stubble and he pulled his scarf up over his mouth. He realised he should have done that earlier, not just to keep out the cold and the smog, but also to stop anyone from recognising him.

He wondered how those assassins had found them at The Jasmine Dragon. Mako would have seen that many heavily armed attack dogs come into the bar, despite the smoke and Wu’s antics.

They must have been waiting for them.

How did they know they’d be there?

Mako wracked his brains, frowning in frustration. For spirits’ sake! He used to be a detective before he was made a glorified babysitter. He should be able to work this out.

Mako hadn’t thought of himself as a babysitter for quite a while, he realised. He was almost growing to enjoy being with Wu. Almost.

He prayed to spirits he didn’t believe in that Wu would be safe on his own.

Mako stopped in his tracks, debating with himself whether or not to go back and stay with Wu or to keep looking for food and meds.

He was shoved and shouldered to the side of the street by the crowd. Finding refuge next to a storefront with large, darkened windows, Mako squeezed the bridge of his nose, clenched his eyes, and screamed internally.

He didn’t know what to do.

He wanted someone to tell him what the right thing to do was.

Dragging his hand down his face in exasperated indecision, Mako glanced up to look at his reflection in the storefront’s window, hoping that it would help him make up his mind.

Startled, he almost jumped out of his skin. Instead of the familiar (if slightly haggard) face he’d expected to see looking reproachfully back at him, women in various poses and various states of undress were winking and waving and wiggling at him. He stared in shock at the faded, wrinkled posters that were plastered over the windows, not knowing where else to look.

Mako felt his cheeks burning and looked away quickly.

Hoping no one would think he had intentionally stopped outside that strip club or porn shop or whatever it was, Mako half walked, half ran up the bustling street.

When the embarrassment had faded, Mako couldn’t help thinking that Wu wouldn’t look half bad in some of the outfits on those posters. He had the figure for it. He’d probably enjoy himself, doing those ridiculously exaggerated poses for the camera.

There was one poster in particular that stuck in Mako’s mind, except, in his mind’s eye, it was Wu hooking a thumb into the translucent green thong and biting his lip coyly, not the busty woman on the poster.

Anyone else might have stopped to wonder why exactly they were picturing their friend … Wait, friend? Client? Mission? … Body guarded? … Whatever … in pornographic poses. But then again, Mako had never been famous for being in touch with his emotions or handling attraction very well.

He shrugged it off, flexed the stiff fingers of his burnt hand, and thought about how hungry he was.

As he walked, the thoughts of food slowly drifted back to Wu.

An old man on a rusty bicycle, pedalling furiously and going far too quickly, nearly crashed into Mako, waking him suddenly from his lacy, sweaty daydream.

Mako looked around in confusion.

The looming middle-city tower he’d been keeping on his left the whole time he’d been walking was still there, but Mako didn’t recognise the street he was on. Not that you could really call it a street. It was more like a muddy track running between the narrow brick-built shops that were sandwiched in tightly together. This was definitely not the neon-lighted, concrete-lined street he’d been on. He looked back the way he’d come. The track seemed to be curving very slightly to the right.

Curious, he carried on walking in the direction he’d been going, now sure that the incredibly narrow street was twisting continuously to the left. Panting for breath and his legs hurting, he realised that he was going very steadily uphill. How long had that been happening?

Disorientated, he looked up at the looming tower again. He squinted at it curiously and wondered why the huge, flickering adverts on its side were now an almost half-mile wide banner of a scowling Kuvira, a jingoistic tagline superimposed over her crisp uniform.

He was sure that the last time he’d looked, the side of the tower had been covered in flickering holo-ads for C-Corp’s off-world shuttle service.

Frowning and with a new burst of energy, Mako carried on walking, keeping a close eye on the tower.

In about two hours he had seen Kuvira’s scowl and the C-Corp ads three times but he was absolutely certain he hadn’t passed any of the same shops.

The narrow street was circling the tower, climbing gradually higher and higher up its base. He was scaling the parasitic mound of favelas that he’d seen plastered like lichen to the tower. Soon he was close enough to the smooth, seamless surface of the huge black pillar that, if he climbed onto one of the shacks lining the road, he could have touched it.

He went under a big, ornate wooden archway and found that the path he was following had suddenly opened out into a big square surrounded on all sides by crumbling brick and corrugated steel buildings piled one on top of another for several stories, all connected by rickety wood and metal stairs, bridges, and ladders. The square was full of people. It was some kind of market place, Mako realised, and judging by the steam rising from the slabs of tarmac and concrete beneath their feet, it was probably perched on top of one of the tower’s huge outlet pipes.

Between two buildings that seemed to be leaning precariously into the wind, Mako caught a glimpse of the under-city stretching out to the smoky horizon far below him. Behind him, the tower stretched up into the clouds, almost seeming to bend over him as it climbed.

Feeling dizzy, Mako wandered around the square.

A drone flew overhead, its swivelling cameras and buzzing rotor blades made Mako think of those enormous primeval dragonflies you see sitting on enormous ferns in children’s picture books about dinosaurs.

As the plastic dragonfly wove in and out of the shop signs and lanterns, Mako pulled his hood down over his eyes and ducked under the tarpaulin of a market stall which claimed to be selling “exotic fruit.” Waiting for the drone to pass, Mako couldn’t help thinking that the only thing “exotic” about the fruit, was the fungus growing on it.

Insisting that he was just looking and that he was sorry but he most certainly did not want any fruit, Mako ducked into the crowd that was milling about the courtyard.

The crumbling brick facades of the buildings on this mountainside plateau were hidden behind a multitude of garish signs with hand-painted _hanga_ script on wood and scrap metal, hammered into shape.

One such sign caught Mako’s eye.

He wormed his way through the throng of people, almost getting hit by a taxi that was forcing its way through the press of bodies. He ducked behind a market stall was selling cabbages that had seen better days. ‘Quite possibly better days in another decade,’ Mako thought, his stomach turning and heading for the shop that had caught his attention.

The sign above the doorway said, “ _GRANDMA YINS CONVENIANCE STORE! FRESH FRUIT! ALCAHOL! MAGAZINE’S! CIGARETTE’S!”_ and underneath, in smaller text, almost as an afterthought, was written “ _candy”_ in what looked like marker pen.

Mako the ignored the atrocious spelling and grammar – he’d complain about it to Wu later – and pushed the door open. An electronic chime buzzed from inside the store. Mako blew on his hands, grateful to be out of the cold. He wished he knew where his gloves had got to. He couldn’t remember leaving them at The Jasmine Dragon but he hadn’t been able to find them this morning. Maybe they were still sitting on the table in Bumi’s booth.

He wandered down the aisles grabbing chocolate bars and packets of biscuits and crisps. He looked at the magazines too, just to give the illusion that he was an ordinary shopper. Kuvira glared at him from a glossy cover. She was holding the planets of the Republic in her hand, crushing them as though she were screwing up a used shopping list. Mako supposed he should have felt angry or annoyed. But he just felt tired.

He didn’t pick up any other magazines, afraid that he’d have a repeat of the sex shop window fiasco.

Mako joined the queue and looked around the store again, looking for security cameras and alarms. He counted the number of cigarette butts in the clerk’s mug and tried to decipher the work rota pinned to the notice board behind the counter. He made a metal note of the portrait of the late Queen Hou-Ting behind the counter and the huge piles of slowly rotting fruit that were spilling across the collapsible, paint-flecked decorating table in the middle of the shop.

It was a force of habit but it usually paid off somehow, even if it was just calming him down a little.

The man in front of Mako took his cigarettes and brown paper bag, paid the clerk with a fistful of dirty golden coins, and left.

Mako dumped his pile of junk food onto the counter and thought about asking the young clerk whether he was Grandma Yin. The name badge he was wearing said, “Hello, my name is … TU” but someone, probably Tu, had scrawled “Fuck off!” over the “Hello, my name is …” so Mako did his best to smile pleasantly and decided against making a joke.

Instead, he mumbled quietly, “Just a moment. Sorry.”

He opened the door to the cooler near the magazines and took out a bottle of something cheap and strong and added that to his pile, along with two toothbrushes. He had another quick look around but couldn’t find any bandages.

“That all?” the clerk asked, utterly uninterested and lighting yet another cigarette, flicking through a well-thumbed wrestling magazine which Mako suspected might have concealed a different kind of magazine, one which he doubted Grandma Yin would approve of.

“I … umm …” Mako coughed. “I need something that will fight an infection. Something strong. Some kind of painkiller too.”

The clerk scowled at him, tapping a column of ash into the Official Queen Hou-Ting Coronation Commemorative Mug.

His petulant frown almost reminded Mako of the way Bolin had pouted as a child when he’d been told by Mako not to throw rocks at passing cars or try to pet the rats or to take that out of his mouth because he didn’t care how good it tasted because you can never be too careful with food and he didn’t know where it had been.

“This look like a pharmacy to you?” the clerk asked.

Mako sighed. He was going to enjoy this. He would try not to of course, but sometimes it just can’t be helped.

“The sign outside says ‘candy’ which is exactly the same thing black-market pharmaceutical dealers use to advertise in the Republic. The guy you just served asked for a packet of White Lotus cigarettes, a brand that went out of circulation more than five years ago. Now I assume that in all that time you just haven’t gotten around to changing your code, have you? You handed him a packet of C-C cigarettes, which of course are the only ones you can get these days, not to mention a large paper bag. And since when have C-Cs been … I couldn’t quite see how much he gave you, but it must have been at least two hundred Yauns.”

“Inflation,” the clerk said, utterly devoid of emotion and blinking wearily at him. “Don’t you know there’s a war on?”

Mako leant over the counter a little and pointed over the clerk’s shoulder. “You have a fridge that’s bigger than your entire magazine rack behind the counter which I’d say is where you keep most of your stolen pharmaceuticals, judging by the fact that you have two … three … _four_ security cameras pointed at it.”

Tu had a good poker face, but Mako could tell that he’d gotten everything right so far. He had the same tell as Bolin. When he was hiding something his lips would purse and his eyebrow twitched.

“You get the drugs delivered hidden in the crates with the pears,” Mako said, really beginning to enjoy himself. “That’s why you have more than you could possibly sell and a tower of plastic crates behind the coffee machine. I’m not even going to mention all the measuring equipment and syringes you have under that newspaper.”

“Well then, mister detective,” Tu said, probably mimicking a villain from one of the many movies that Mako hadn’t seen, “it would seem we have come to an impasse of sorts, wouldn’t you say?”

Mako narrowed his eyes at him. “How so?”

“Well, the only reason you’d be telling me this rather than handcuffing and beating me is because you’re not a cop. Or, at least not a cop here. Which means …. You still gotta to pay.”

“I can tell the authorities,” Mako lied.

“What makes you think they don’t already know?” he asked, raising a thick eyebrow and folding his huge arms on the counter. “Grandma’s very likeable around here. She provides a valuable service to the community. Not narcotics mind you. Purely medicinal.”

Mako huffed dismissively, shuffling his feet uncomfortably.

Tu bristled and took a deep breath. “C-Corp’s healthcare is worse than their banks,” he said, waving a finger at Mako. “Insurance is through the roof. And even if you manage to get the insurance, that doesn’t cover the ‘non-essentials’.” He began counting on his thick, dirty fingers. “Tampons are still taxed and not covered by insurance. So are morning after pills. And abortions. HIV tests and treatment are more expensive than they’ve ever been and the waiting lists are ridiculous. Hormones for trans people are practically impossible to get down here and are more heavily taxed than alcohol and cigarettes combined.”

“That’s really awful,” Mako said, “but I really …”

“Grandma didn’t think that was fair,” Tu said proudly, ignoring Mako. “She started by selling cheap contraceptive pills at her fruit stand over near the docks when she was eighteen and now she practically runs the entire sector. She’s been responsible for opening over a hundred free clinics, cut down the heroin trafficking to almost nothing, and stopped basically all the inter-gang violence in the sector. Know what else? Lowest child mortality rate in the hemisphere, this sector. Grandma’s a very well-respected member of the local community because of that. She’s a … a folk hero! And forget the Godfather, Grandma Yin’s th-”

“Get the damn drugs,” Mako growled, incredibly tired of Tu’s sales pitch.

The clerk grinned and opened the fridge, a cigarette still hovering between his lips. After rummaging around a bit, he placed two small bottles on the counter next to Mako’s chocolate bars and smiled a broad, saccharine smile and held a hand out for the money.

“How much?” Mako asked, thumbing the wad of money in his pocket.

Tu took a drag on his cigarette, blew a jet of smoke at him, and his chest expanded like a gorilla defending its territory. Mako wondered for a second whether gorillas had territories but realised it didn’t matter.

“How about you keep going until I tell you to stop,” Tu said, lowering his voice in an attempt to sound as don’t-fuck-with-me as possible.

Mako groaned and placed the first of the still very slightly damp notes in Tu’s broad hand.

Tu looked at the piece of paper as though Mako had given him a piece of used toilet paper. Mako flinched as the money, screwed up into a small pellet bounced off his nose.

“We don’t take that shit here,” Tu snarled. Mako glared at him. He was half-tempted to grab Tu by the hair and drag him over the counter, slam the door of the cooler into his face, take his money and his chocolate and his drugs, and leave.

Instead, Mako pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Why not?”

“Are you kidding?!” Tu’s smouldering cigarette dropped out of his mouth. “Even Grandma Yin couldn’t deal with the shit-storm that handling Republic money would bring down on us. Get out!” Tu shouted, pointing at the door as though Mako were a dog who’d just done something unspeakable on the brand-new carpet. “Out!”

Mako stood unmoving, glaring at the large convenience store clerk. He swallowed the angry fire that he felt rising inside and, turning on his heal, left the store, slamming the door so hard he though the glass would shatter.

The wind tore at his clothes, almost knocking him over. The wind that howled around the middle-city’s towers was especially strong here and it clawed at him mercilessly.

Mako elbowed his way through the crowd, heading in no particular direction until he came to the opening of an alleyway between two shops and ducked through a hole in the broken wire fence. An overflowing dumpster took the brunt of Mako’s exasperation and anger, not to mention his feet and fists.

When he was finished, he dragged his hands down his face, wiping angry tears from his eyes and running his hands through his hair. He didn’t know why he was so angry. He’d more than half-expected something like this would happen. Maybe it was just all the frustration and anxiety and fear of the last few months finally finding an outlet.

Slumping down in the mud, his back to the unjustly persecuted dumpster, Mako tried to clear his head. He hadn’t eaten in … shit, he had no idea. He was hungry, he’d slept badly, and he was worried about Wu.

He’d go back in there, he decided. He’d kick that door open and point his gun at Tu and help himself to the contents of the cash register and the drugs and all the chocolate he could carry.

He’d do it right now! Right fuckin now!

He didn’t move.

Mako sighed and let his head fall back against the dumpster.

There were several flaws with this plan, he realised. Firstly, he didn’t have a gun. All of his weapons were in a bucket in the tavern and the gun Bumi had given him last night was somewhere at the bottom of the river. Secondly, Mako had no idea whether Tu had a gun behind the counter. And thirdly, Mako just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He could almost hear Korra laughing, telling him to pull the stick out of his butt and calling him a fucking boy scout.

Mako wiped his eyes and got to his feet.

Hood pulled up and hands shoved deep in his pockets, Mako wandered dejectedly back home. It was strange to think of the tiny little apartment as home. Mako chewed his lip and wondered whether he thought of it as home because that was where Wu was.

It was beginning to get a little dark and a light rain was starting to fall. He had only just made it to the bottom of the spiralling path that climbed up the base of the tower, so Mako hopped onto the back of one the many dilapidated buses that tore through the under-city streets. He clung to the rusty metal of the luggage rack that was bolted onto the back of the smoke-belching overcrowded bus and watched the shops and market stalls and people crawl slowly past.

About an hour passed and Mako’s hands were getting tired. His scarred left hand was screaming at him as the wind and rain whipped at his face and clothes.

Afraid that he would fall off the bus at any minute, Mako jumped off as soon as he thought it was going slowly enough. He landed on the dirty tarmac far from gracefully and felt something in his ankle give way. Spluttering in the clouds of smoke that were spewing from the bus’ exhaust, Mako limped out of the traffic.

Mako pulled his hood down, ran his fingers through his hair, and sucked his teeth. He stood on one foot for a few minutes, hoping the pain in his ankle would pass quickly. It didn’t.

The light was fading rapidly and Mako limped down the street, sticking close to the shop fronts as far as possible from the cars and bikes that wove dangerously through the crowds.

After a few yards that felt like a few miles, Mako stopped and sighed.

He was outside the shop with the posters again.

There was a neon sign over the doorway that he hadn’t noticed before but which stood out in the growing darkness like, well, a neon sign. The sign claimed that the strip club had the best sushi and strippers in the world. Mako thought that was a rather odd combination but something else had grabbed his attention. A handwritten cardboard notice stuck to the door below the obligatory “18+ ONLY” sign, said that help was wanted and that he should inquire within.

Mako wondered what exactly “help” meant.

Swallowing, he pushed the door open and stepped into the red-tinged, smoke-filled darkness.

Keeping his watering eyes on the floor, Mako made his way through the club. A woman wearing something apparently physics defying asked Mako if he was looking for a good time.

He smiled politely and told her he was looking for a job. His eyes were firmly planted elsewhere but he felt her look him up and down and purr appreciatively. She escorted him through the club, past the kitchen, down a poorly lit and narrow flight of concrete steps, to a door marked “management”.

She knocked on the door then made her way back upstairs, giving Mako a broad, genuinely friendly smile as she left. Mako thanked her awkwardly and waited.

The door swung open, someone said “come in” and Mako found himself in a cramped smoke-filled office while a thin, weaselly woman in a waistcoat looked him up and down curiously. Her black hair was shot with grey and she was sucking a cheap-smelling cigarette.

Mako didn’t introduce himself and he didn’t ask about the job that was available. He didn’t ask where the fish for the sushi came from either. He had a nagging suspicion that the answer would be the stagnant river he and Wu had taken a plunge in last night.

The walls of the office were covered with pictures of scantily (and often not at all) clad man and women that had been cut out of magazines.

“You ever stripped before?” the woman in the waistcoat asked, sitting herself down in a large leather armchair behind a desk that was too big for the room.

“Umm …” Mako could feel himself sweating underneath his scarf. He swallowed. “I was actually … I was actually wondering if … I was looking for something in the kitchen. Dishwasher maybe?”

“Hmm.” She sat back in her seat, wreathed in cigarette smoke. “Shame.”

Mako scratched the back of his neck and looked awkwardly at the floor. The magazine clippings plastering the walls were making him uncomfortable. So was the proprietor’s intense gaze. “I can start right away. Doing dishes I mean. Not … not stripping.”

“Hmm,” she said again. She ground the cigarette out in a cracked glass ashtray and lit another. “We need a busboy. And if that asshole whatshisname is too drunk to show up for work then you’ll be doing dishes too. That sound okay to you? You can start tomorrow night.”

Mako nodded and said thank you. “Would … would it be okay if I had the first, uh, week or so’s payment in advance? I have … bills and … uh … bills.”

Mako’s new boss, whose name he still didn’t know, laughed so hard and for so long Mako was worried she’d have a heart attack.

She wiped her eyes and tried to catch her breath. “Fuck no,” she wheezed.

Mako nodded again and thanked her again and left the office as quickly as he could.

He ran up the stairs, ignoring his ankle, and burst through the door into the club. He was worming his way through the rapidly growing crowd, trying to look anywhere but the stage, when a strong hand grabbed his arm.

Mako tensed and reached instinctively for the holster that wasn’t there anymore.

“Whoa, whoa!” Bumi laughed, patting Mako’s arm. “Easy! It’s me!”

Mako relaxed and scowled at the smuggler. “Don’t do that!”

“Sorry, sorry!” Bumi chuckled, raising his hands defensively. “I was just happy to see you!” He gave Mako a bear hug and dragged him over to a table that was halfway between the stage and the kitchen. “What are you doing here, kid?!” he asked as he pushed Mako down onto the sticky red leather seat.

“Getting a job,” Mako said, not knowing what else to say. He didn’t want to be here, foul-mouthed smuggler or no foul-mouthed smuggler. “In the kitchen. Though I’d probably have taken anything they offered. You’re … here for the strippers, right?”

“On, no! I’m here for the sushi! Best on the planet,” he said, patting his stomach and nodding at the pile of empty dishes on the table. Bumi glanced at his pet, then, when he was sure the alien wasn’t listening, he leant closer to Mako and whispered behind his hand, “Boom Ju comes for the strippers. Ladies, fellas, whatever, he doesn’t mind. I think he likes the glitter.”

Bumi’s breath stunk of cheap alcohol and tobacco and raw fish and Mako had to force himself not to gag.

Mako made a noise of vague agreement and Bumi clapped him on the back. “I never thought I’d see you again!” he said, grinning toothily. “I was sure you’d been killed!”

Mako kept his eye on the small but elegant gun that was lying next to a half-empty bowl of rice but Bumi had clearly already had a lot to drink and was probably just looking for a drinking companion.

“Thanks,” Mako said, unable to resist the sarcasm.

Bumi either didn’t notice Mako’s sarcasm or chose to ignore it. “You’re welcome!”

Mako wasn’t sure what Bumi was talking about and then he remembered the strange, plastic gun Bumi had given him. “Oh, yeah,” he mumbled. “That gun was …”

“Fucking amazing, am I right?!” Bumi said, excited like a ten year old talking about a favourite toy. “Got it … where did I get it? … Maybe it was Dad’s? Or Uncle Zuko’s? Hmm.” He scratched his thick beard thoughtfully and fingering the culture-clash of jewellery around his neck. “No!” Mako jumped out of his skin. “I got it in my first year of service! We were on Kyoshi and …”

Mako was spared Bumi’s war story as two almost naked women covered in glitter began crooning over his long-eared, glowing little pet. Boom Ju’s translucent wings thrummed excitedly and Bumi rolled his blue-grey eyes.

“No respect for women, that one,” he said, gesturing at the alien with a square-tipped thumb. He handed the girls a fistful of coins and, calling them by name, asked them to take the “horny little rabbit monster” to the kitchen and run him a cold shower in the sink.

Laughing and tickling him behind the ears, they took Boom Ju into the kitchen.

“I really need to get going,” Mako said quietly.

“I hope they bring some more of that heated saké when they’ve cooled him down,” Bumi said, fiddling despondently with one of the empty small ceramic cups that littered the table.

“I really need to get going!” Mao said, louder this time.

“Oh,” Bumi said, looking ever so slightly crestfallen, “okay. Hey, hey. Umm … Mac … Ma … Mako?”

Mako nodded. “Yeah.”

“Mako! You get that money. And I’ll … You get the money and you find me. I’ll take you and your boyfriend wherever you want. I ever tell you the Water Nomad’s the fastest ship in …” Bumi burped and giggled. “What was I saying?”

Mako got to his feet and scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “Bye, Bumi. When we get the money, I’ll make sure to come find you.”

“That would be so great,” Bumi said, smiling. He’d had more to drink than Mako had thought. “You don’t even need the whole fare. You’re a good kid. A good egg. Just get a quarter of the fare.” He thought for a second then changed his mind. “Half the fare. Half the fare and I’ll take you wherever you want.”

Mako sighed. He doubted Bumi would remember this, and even if he did, Mako doubted he’d honour his promise of a discount.

“I’ll … see you around, Bumi.”

Mako almost saluted, changed his mind, and slipped out of the club.

The rain was pouring down now, gleaming in the neon lights of the city. Mako trudged through the rain and the wind and fingered the gun in his pocket. Bumi had been too drunk and too preoccupied with his pet’s glitter fixation to notice him slip the rather ornate gun into his jacket.

There was a narrow, rubbish-strewn alleyway running behind the convenience store and a barbed-wire topped gate leading into a small paved yard. The neon lights of the all-night massage parlour overhead that was wedged between Grandma Yin’s building and the tower, supported by rotting wooden struts, cast the alleyway in a surreal electric-blue moonlight.

Mako leant back against the wooden gate and tried to calm his breathing. He went over the layout of the store in his mind, working out where his blind spots would be and what he could use as cover if he had to.

He checked the gun several times. It was fully loaded and seemed well looked after.

He held it in his hands experimentally, testing its weight. It was very old, he realised. Possibly dating back to before the Hundred Year War. Silver, age-tarnished metal work writhed around the dark polished wooden butt. In the dim blue light, Mako thought the metal work looked like dragons, but he couldn’t tell for sure.

His scarred left hand felt stiff. He clenched and unclenched his fist a few times and decided that it was lucky he was right handed. Still, this wasn’t a movie. You needed both hands if you wanted to shoot properly. Not that he was actually planning on shooting anyone.

The alley was half submerged in water and he watched for a few minutes as a piece of rubbish was carried along by the current down the steep alleyway. The little stream might have even been calming if the cold water hadn’t been lapping at the bottom of his far too long jeans and creeping through his shoes, saturating his already far from dry socks.

Mako swiped a strand of hair out of his eyes, stuck the gun into the waistband of his loose jeans, shoved the fistful of crumpled notes into his jeans, and pulled off his jacket. Climbing up onto an old washing machine that had found its final resting place in the alley, Mako threw his jacket onto the barbed-wire and pulled himself up, only slightly cutting his hands and knees.

He landed in the small, cigarette strewn yard and pain shot through his ankle. Biting back the pain, he reached up for his jacket.

It was stuck fast.

Mako sighed.

It was not his day. It hadn’t been his day for a very fucking long time.

Leaving the jacket where it was, Mako pulled his scarf up over his mouth and nose and tried the lock on the store’s backdoor. It didn’t budge. Mako scratched his burnt forearm and looked up at the windows above his head. There weren’t any within reach and there wasn’t anything in the tiny yard that he could use to get up to them.

He had a set of lock picks in his jacket pocket. Or at least he had done. They were with Bumi’s gun at the bottom of the river. Mako swore under his breath and rubbed his tired eyes. He took a step back, pointed the gun at the lock, took the safety off, paused, breathed, and squeezed the trigger.

The muzzle flare was so bright he thought he’d been blinded, and was fairly certain he’d gone deaf.

Ears ringing and vision clearing, he kicked the door opened, splinters of wood and metal flying through the air. He was in some kind of store room, overflowing with boxes, broken fridges, and fruit.

Mako shook his head furiously, trying to shake the ringing out of his head. As his hearing slowly came back, he heard screaming.

As he readied himself to burst into the store, he wondered what he should say. He had to be cool and confident and everything else he most certainly was not. All he could think of to say was something out of a cowboy movie or “are you feelin’ lucky, punk?”

Neither particularly appealed to him.

He pushed the door open and pointed the gun at Tu and the old woman standing beside him. Before he could stop himself, he opened his mouth and “I’m terribly sorry” came tumbling out. “This … I suppose this is a robbery?”

Mako silently swore at himself and scanned the rest of the store for anyone else. Mako tried to think how Korra would handle this. Not much better, he decided.

“Oh, my!” the old woman gasped. Tu’s reaction was rather more colourful and quite possibly unprintable.

“I’m so sorry to trouble you,” Mako said, mentally kicking himself, coaxing the handful of shoppers into a corner with his gun (that was actually rather ridiculous-looking, he decided) while keeping a careful eye on Tu. “But could you please stay over there?

“Now listen, dearie,” the old woman said, smiling sweetly as though Mako were a long lost relative to whom she was offering tea and cake. “I don’t much like having a gun pointed at me. I’ve lived my entire life not having guns pointed at me and I’d really rather not start making a habit of it. Especially not at my age.”

Mako set his jaw and kept the gun levelled at her. He hoped no one would notice that he was keeping his finger off the trigger and that the safety was on.

He grabbed a blue child’s rucksack off a nearby rack and threw it at Tu. There was a pink cartoony cat’s face on the bag and tassels on the zippers.

Mako motioned to the bag with the gun. “I need an anti-bacterial and a painkiller. Something to sew up a gunshot wound and clean bandages. You can empty the till too.”

“It’s not even loaded, Grandma,” Tu said goadingly, though he kept his hands up well above his head.

Mako clicked the safety off, squeezed the trigger, and a hole appeared right between the eyes of the portrait of Hou-Ting.

Tiny shards of glass fell like fine snow and smoke stung Mako’s eyes.

Grandma Yin turned red and shook with rage. Tu glanced nervously at her, then at Mako, then back at his quivering grandmother. He picked up the rucksack and opened the fridge.

“There,” he said, placing the rucksack on the counter. “Now get out.”

Mako shook his head. He pointed the still smoking gun at the rucksack. “Remember what I got when I came in earlier? Fill it up with that.”

Tu raised his eyebrows but did as he was told, stuffing the rucksack with chocolate bars and cheap alcohol and toothbrushes and biscuits and the day’s takings from the till.

When the bag was near to bursting, Tu slid it across the floor to Mako who picked it up, not taking the gun off the clerk.

“Why have you even got your scarf like that, dude?” Tu asked, backing away. “You came in like three hours ago. I know what you look like.”

Mako could feel Grandma Yin’s eyes burning into his skull as he shouldered the rucksack and edged over to the tiny convenience store’s main entrance.

He pushed the door open, an electronic buzz echoed through the store, and Mako mumbled “Thank you,” before he could stop himself.

“Fuck you,” Grandma Yin said, making her grandson start in surprise.

Just as he was about to leave, Mako paused and pulled his scarf down. “By the way, the apostrophes are all wrong on your sign. And that’s not how you spell ‘convenience’ or ‘alcohol’ either.”

Mako ran as fast as he could for as long as her could, the pain in his ankle making his eyes water and his jeans in constant danger of falling down to his heels.

The rain was coming down like buckets of nails by the time he made it back to their waterfront squat.

He had doubled back three times, taken a detour through a derelict, decaying multi-storey car park that had become home to hundreds of little shacks, and waited for an hour in the queue for a ferry across to the neighbouring sector on the off chance that he was being followed. He was so exhausted when he at last found himself outside the broken door with its yellow tape that he was convinced he would pass out if he didn’t lie down in the next twenty seconds.

Shrugging the rucksack off his tired shoulders, Mako knocked on the door quietly. There was no answer. He leant closer to the door and whispered, “Wu? Wu, it’s me.”

There was no answer.

Panic beginning to bubble up, Mako pushed the door cautiously. It swung open on its broken hinges, groaning loudly. The apartment was draped in darkness and the little fridge was where he had left it that morning.

“Wu?” Mako sighed, trying to convince himself that he was annoyed rather than worried. “I told you put the fridge back. Anyone could have come in.” Mako dropped the rucksack onto the sofa and, tentatively, pulled the gun out of the waistband of his jeans. “Wu?”

There was no answer.

Mako swallowed. His throat was dry. His hands were shaking. Treading carefully across the weathered floorboards, Mako edged over to the bathroom. He changed his grip on the gun, decided he liked it better the way it had been but his cold, numb fingers couldn’t find their previous positions again.

Holding his panic down and clearing his head with a long, slow breath, Mako pushed the door open and flicked the light switch on.

“Wu?!” Mako felt his blood run cold and he threw the gun aside, falling to his knees beside Wu.

Wrapping his arms tightly around him, Mako pulled Wu up off the peeling lino floor and into his lap.

Wu’s stomach had been nearly empty so there wasn’t much vomit in the toilet or on the floor. But what little there was had flecks of blood. That wasn’t good. Mako gently tapped Wu’s pallid cheek and kissed his sweat-drenched forehead. His shoulder was caked in dry black blood.

Mako was trained for this. He was sure he was. So why didn’t he know what to do?

He clenched his teeth, choking back his tears and held Wu closer, squeezing him as tightly as he dared.

Something at the back of his mind made itself heard over the panic and the anger and told him to check for a pulse.

With trembling fingers, Mako held Wu’s wrist and searched for a sign of life, unable to tear his eyes off Wu’s face.

Mako let out a breath laden with tears as he felt the steady fluttering of a heartbeat beneath his fingers.

He picked Wu up off the floor and carried him over to the sofa, laying him down gently like a fragile china doll. Tearing the bloody bandages off, Mako tried inspecting the wound.

It was too dark to see anything and he had to turn the lights on. In the flickering electric light, the wound looked even worse than it had done that morning. It wasn’t oozing puss or turning green but Mako, ever the optimist, thought it was probably just a matter of time before that began to happen.

He tipped the contents of the rucksack out onto the floor and rummaged through the pile of candy and coins until he eventually found what he was looking for. Tu had not only included more than enough of the medicine (and junk food) that Mako had asked for, but he had also thrown in two small plastic cases that reminded Mako of a child’s pencil case. Inside each were several plastic-wrapped needles, thread, gauze, and everything he could possibly need for sewing up a small-ish wound.

Tiredness and panic and hunger catching up on him, Mako’s eyes wouldn’t focus on the bottles’ labels and warnings. He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and groaned.

“Hey, you,” a weak voice whispered, hoarse and faint.

Mako looked up, his heart leaping into his throat.

“Hey!” he whispered, crouching down beside the sofa and stroking Wu’s messy hair. “How are you feeling?”

Wu screwed his eyes up tightly and tried to sit up. Mako shushed him soothingly, a hand on his chest, until he relaxed again.

“I … I was throwing up,” Wu croaked, confused. “Shoulder wouldn’t stop bleeding. It hurt and … did I pass out?”

“Yeah. Yeah, you did, but don’t worry. I’m here now.” Mako ran his fingers through Wu’s curly hair once more before straightening himself up and grabbing the bottles of medicine.

He eventually managed to decipher the confusing instructions and helped Wu to sit upright.

Sitting next to Wu, one knee drawn up under him, Mako shook the first bottle and broke the seal. The lid had a pump like a soap dispenser and Mako squeezed out a small jet of foam directly into the raw gash in Wu’s flesh.

There was a fizzing and Wu winced, sucking air in through his teeth. Mako gripped Wu’s shaking hand in his scarred hand and waited for the foam to be absorbed into the wound.

A faint, lingering smell like hospital wards and disinfectant filled the air.

Mako let go of Wu’s trembling hand and handed him two chalky-white pills and a bottle of something very cheap but very strong.

Wu raised an eyebrow at him as he popped the painkillers into his mouth.

“I thought you could do with a treat,” Mako explained, laying out one of the sewing kits on the sofa. “If anyone deserves to mix pain medication and alcohol, it’s you.”

Wu attempted a smile and took of gulp from the bottle.

“You’d better not … be trying to … get me drunk … so you can have your way with me,” Wu said, quietly and well aware that it wasn’t very funny.

Mako broke the sealed packet that the needle was in and unravelled the coil of thread.

“This … this is going to hurt,” Mako said, voice shaking, breath rattling, palms sweating.

Wu took a deep breath, downed more of the drink than was sensible, and nodded.

A deeply scarred hand on Wu’s shoulder, Mako held the two sides of the wound between his finger and thumb so that the gash was as far closed as was possible.

Mako gnawed his lip and pushed the needle into Wu’s flesh.

Wu clenched his teeth, sweat clinging to his brow, and gripped the neck of the bottle until his knuckles turned white. Mako paused, tried to remember to breathe, and stroked Wu’s arm with a burnt little finger slightly, still gripping his shoulder tightly.

Mako measured his progress with his fingers. Every forefinger-width, he cut the thread with his teeth, tied a knot, and pushed the needle back into Wu’s shoulder.

Afraid that Wu was about to pass out, Mako nudged Wu’s shin with his foot and forced a smile. “I think I pissed off the mob today.”

Wu would have smiled if his mouth hadn’t been set in a strained grimace of pain. He gulped back something and whispered. “You’re … you’re not sure if you pissed them off? Or you’re not sure if they were the mob?”

“Umm, the second one, I think.”

“I’m … I’m not sure which is worse, to be honest,” Wu said, taking another gulp. “This is awful,” he gasped as a dribble of amber liquid ran down his chin.

Mako’s stitching was very far from pretty, but it did the job. By the time he had bound Wu’s shoulder in the clean bandages, the bleeding had well and truly stopped for the first time in almost twenty-four hours.

Wu sighed and hung his head, shoulders hunched. Mako took the bottle out of Wu’s hand, set it down on the floor, and draped the blanket over his shoulders. He offered him a couple of chocolate bars and other snacks and sat down next to him.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Mako asked, mouth full of chocolate and rubbing his sore ankle.

Wu shrugged, looking down at his untouched pile of snack food.

Mako was quiet for a few moments, chewing his chocolate bar without tasting it.

Thunder rolled distantly overhead, though it may have just been a train, and the lights flickered, threatening to go out. Rain hammered against the windowpanes and Mako felt very suddenly, but not entirely unpleasantly, cold.

He shivered and let out a deep, shaking breath.

Pulling the blanket tighter around himself, Wu turned and looked at Mako. Their mirrored eyes met silently. Wu’s dark green-flecked eyes were glistening in the dim, erratic lights. There was so much pain and longing in his eyes that Mako felt a warm ache spread through his chest.

Mako wanted more than anything else to be able to make Wu smile. He missed the irritating and childish Wu he’d first met, the Wu who smiled constantly and found a joke in everything and took nothing seriously except caviar and shoes.

He wanted that smile back, but he didn’t know what to say.

He wasn’t particularly funny, especially when he tried to be. Besides, he knew that making a joke now would seem forced and hollow.

The wind howled outside, rattling the windows and clawing at the concrete and pouring through every crack and hole, but neither of them noticed.

Several times, Wu looked like he was on the verge of saying something but, as the minutes passed, the rain-filled silence remained unbroken.

“You should really eat something,” Mako said quietly, holding a packet of chocolate biscuits out to him. Wu let his gaze fall away embarrassedly and smiled. It was faint and fleeting but even that brief quiver of his lips made Mako’s chest hurt a little better. “I know junk food gets pretty boring. But you can’t be too careful.”

Mako was about to make a joke about the entirely likely possibility that the local kebab stands were serving human flesh, not to mention their lax hand washing policies, when Wu leant forwards, resting his forehead on Mako’s shoulder.

“Mako?” Wu said quietly, opening the packet of biscuits and getting crumbs and broken biscuits everywhere.

“Yes, Wu?”

A biscuit crunched in Wu’s mouth and Mako waited patiently.

He finished the first biscuit and wolfed down another three before wiping his mouth on the back of hand. Looking up at Mako without completely lifting his head off his shoulder, Wu whispered, “Have you ever been to Earth?”

Mako frowned. That was an odd question. “There’s nothing there anymore. Well, not _nothing_. There’s just … No. No, I’ve never been.”

“Neither have I,” Wu said around a fifth biscuit, shuffling on the sofa a little and moving so that it was now his cheek that was resting on Mako’s shoulder. “Funny, isn’t it?”

Mako’s stomach growled, Wu chuckled, and handed him two biscuits. “Why’s it funny?”

“I’m the heir to the Earth Empire,” Wu said quietly, barely audible over the wind and rain, “and I’ve never been to Earth.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” Mako said, knowing that it wouldn’t, “I doubt Kuvira has either.”

Wu made an unimpressed throaty sound and, curling up on the sofa, laid his head down in Mako’s lap. “What do you think it was like? Before the gate exploded?”

Mako sighed and stroked his burnt fingers through Wu’s thick curls absentmindedly.

“My … my ex-girlfriend went to Earth once. Before the gate accident.” Mako didn’t say anything about who had caused that catastrophe. That had been a dark time for Korra and he felt bad bringing it up even without her there. “I guess you’ve heard the stories about what the accident did to the planet, but from what Korra … my ex … said, it seems like we’d already done more than enough harm before the portal blew up. The Hundred Year War and centuries of …”

Mako realised that he was playing with Wu’s hair and let his hand fall onto the sofa, suddenly feeling awkward and embarrassed.

Wu touched Mako’s thigh and whispered, “Don’t stop.” Mako lifted his hand hesitantly off the coarse fabric. “Please.”

His scarred fingers stroking slowly and rhythmically through Wu’s hair again, his other hand resting on Wu’s softly rising and falling side, Mako relaxed.

“We’d already pushed the planet to its limits. The Hundred Year War had taken a toll on the Earth, and the centuries of industry and greed before that had … fucked everything up. I think … I think, from what Korra said, that things were starting to get better though. Slowly. No one wanted to live on a dying planet anymore and they had so many other worlds to choose from. So they left. Billions of them. And as the population decreased, the Earth began to heal. Korra said that nature had reclaimed the empty cities quickly. She said … she used to tell me about how every day she was there, she would climb to the top of this huge tower and watch the sun set. She said it was breath-taking. She could never quite describe it, but she said all the pollution and radiation in the air and … I dunno, maybe something about how the atmosphere had been damaged … it made the sunsets look like …”

Mako searched for the words. It was hard to describe something he had never seen himself, something which even Korra who _had_ seen it had found so difficult to put into words.

“Like what?” Wu whispered.

“Korra said that when the sun set it was like the sky was suddenly full of writhing dragons, dancing and fighting until night finally fell. Enormous, formless dragons made of green and orange and red fire and … and it was so beautiful that it made her cry. Korra was … is … the strongest, most amazing, headstrong person I’ve ever known, and every evening for the week or so she was on Earth, she would stand on that abandoned tower in the abandoned city on the almost completely abandoned planet, and cry.”

“I wish I could have seen those sunsets,” Wu said, deep in awe.

“So do I.”

“Growing up here, even in the upper city, way up above the clouds, the sunsets were nothing like that. Do you think …?” Wu’s voice trailed off into silence. Mako thought he might have slipped off to sleep but the wind ebbed for a moment and he heard the sound of Wu munching on biscuits. “Do you think,” Wu said, mouth full, “maybe if we find a way off Ba Sing Se, we could go to Earth. I doubt anyone would look for us there.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Mako said, brushing a few errant curls off Wu’s forehead. “No one’s really cared enough to check, but I think it’s just a radioactive wilderness now. What isn’t desert and molten rock is probably a big swampy mess.”

“Is anyone still living there?” Wu asked, seemingly sinking deeper into Mako’s lap, his voice sounding distinctly sleepy now.

“Only a handful of people still live there. Even before the accident, hardly anyone lived on Earth. Only a million or so people were left and they were nearly all in the Antarctic. The rising temperatures had made everything for thousands of miles north and south of the equator a wasteland, but it had made the Antarctic habitable. Not just habitable. Fertile. And they were right under the hyperspace portal, which, I guess until the spirit drive made the gates obsolete, was great for trade. It was less good for them when it exploded and tore that rift in space. Now, it’s mostly mutants and aliens and fugitives and everyone who was just too damn poor to leave. They probably just … scavenge through the ruins of the cities, fighting every day just to survive. I doubt we’d be able to enjoy the sunsets if we ran away there.”

Wu made a sad sighing noise.

“How many trillions of trillions do you suppose we’ve spent terraforming new worlds?” he asked. “And we couldn’t even be bothered to fix our own world.” He was silent for a few minutes and Mako listened to the rain and the wind drumming and howling outside. “That’s what I’m supposed to do, isn’t it?”

“Fix the Earth?” Mako asked, puzzled.

“Well, no. Not that exactly. I mean …” Wu exhaled deeply. “I mean I’m supposed to try to fix everything. That’s what being in charge is about. It’s about fixing everything.”

Mako felt his eyelids growing heavy and stifled a yawn. “I suppose so.”

“Growing up, my entire life, I thought that ruling the Empire was all about …” Wu shrugged, which was a rather clumsy gesture while lying on his side, curled up on the sofa, his head resting in Mako’s lap. “I thought being royalty was getting what you wanted and having a good time and flirting with girls and eating fancy food and boosting my singing career. But that’s not right. I should be helping people, fixing this mess of a world and …” Wu’s voice broke and Mako thought he was on the verge of tears. “What Kuvira’s doing … it’s not right. She’s not fixing anything. She’s just … breaking everything and calling the shattered pieces ‘progress’ and ‘unity’ but …”

“That’s why we have to stop her,” Mako said. “That’s why we have to keep you safe.”

“Mako …”

“Yes?”

“I don’t think I’m ready.” Wu sniffed and wiped his eyes and nose on a corner of his blanket. “I don’t think I’m ready to fix anything.”

Mako swallowed the pang of heartache rising in his throat and fought the urge, the need, to hug Wu tightly in his arms and kiss his forehead, eyelids, cheeks, and lips.

Instead, he stroked Wu’s salt-streaked cheek with a thumb.

“You don’t have to be ready,” he whispered. “You didn’t choose this for yourself.”

Sniffing loudly, Wu sat up, dragged his hand across his face and wrapped his arms around Mako’s neck. Taken aback a little, Mako didn’t know what to do. Slowly, he let his hands rest on Wu’s back and closed his eyes. Nestled in the curve of his neck, Wu’s tears and breath were hot on his skin and Mako tentatively pulled him closer, careful not to hurt his shoulder.

“Thank you,” Wu whispered, lips brushing Mako’s neck. “For everything.”

Mako didn’t say anything but he let his hands slide across Wu’s back until he was actually hugging him too.

There was a deafening smash of thunder and the lights went out. Mako held Wu tighter and ran burnt fingers through his hair soothingly. Wrapped in darkness and each other’s arms, they eventually drifted off to sleep as the storm raged unheeded outside.


	4. Chapter 4

Mako looked dubiously at the grey meat. Grease was beginning to cool and congeal on his hand. He glanced at Wu, sitting beside him on the edge of the roof, looking slightly bedraggled in the drizzle and making short work of his fourth or fifth skewer of mysterious, anonymous meat. Sauce was dripping slowly down his chin and covering his fingers. Wu smiled at him and licked sauce off his thumb.

“It’s good!” Wu said, gulping down a mouthful, his breath steaming in the cold. “Really good!”

It was freezing out on the flat rooftop of their building, but it wasn’t any warmer inside either. At least it wasn’t raining too heavily for once, though the sagging tarred roof was covered in puddles.

Mako pulled a face. “So is crack. Still kills you.”

“This is better than crack!”

Mako had spent the day working at the strip club. He had spent the day, just as he had spent every day for almost a week now, bussing tables and washing dishes, occasionally zipping dancers into tight-fitting outfits and, more frequently than he’d have liked, escorting the more handsy customers outside, face first.

On his way back to the tiny apartment over the water, coins from tips and his first week’s wages clinking in his pocket, Mako had broken his first rule of surviving on the run: No Street Meat.

He wasn’t sure why he’d bought he boxful of greasy meat skewers from the vendor. But sitting up on the roof with Wu, their legs dangling over the grey-green water far below, he was glad he had.

Mako smiled and, with Wu watching like a mother checking that no vegetables got hidden under the plate or fed to the dog, he took a tentative bite.

He barely chewed it and swallowed it quickly. Mako instantly regretted it. Wu had been right: it really was good. He took his time with the rest of the skewer, savouring the taste if not the feel of the greasy mystery meat. He regretted taking his time too, because by the time he’d finished, Wu had devoured all but one of the skewers. Mako snatched it hungrily from the napkin and tore into the cold meat furiously.

Wu laughed and, laughing louder, flicked one of the greasy wooden skewers at Mako.

Turning slowly, lips pursed exaggeratedly to hide his smile, Mako glared at Wu.

“Teach me to fight!” Wu said suddenly, making Mako choke on the last of the spiced chewy meat.

“What?” Mako spluttered, wiping the grease and sauce from his mouth with the back of his scarred hand.

Wu climbed stiffly to his feet and stood on the edge of the roof, looking down into the stagnant water.

“I’ve been thinking. You should teach me to fight.”

“No,” Mako said, throwing the stripped skewers off the roof into the water where they landed silently.

“What? You afraid I’ll twat you?” Wu said, nudging Mako’s ribs with his foot.

Mako took a long slow breath, and pulled Wu’s leg out from under him, sending him sprawling across the patchwork roof.

“You utter shit!” Wu growled, trying half-heartedly to kick Mako off the edge of the roof.

Mako got to his feet, hiding his smile behind his hand, pretending to wipe the grease from his already clean face.

“Okay. Come on then.”

Mako stepped over the prostrate Wu and stood in the middle of the roof, as far from air vents and satellite dishes and aerials as it was possible to get. He spread his arms wide, invitingly. Eyes narrowing to slits, Wu pulled himself up and lunged at Mako.

Mako sidestepped Wu effortlessly, almost gracefully and Wu landed heavily in a puddle.

Wu got quickly back to his feet, grinning wickedly.

Mako sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Try it again,” he said wearily.

The wind was tugging at his hair and he had to keep flicking it out of his eyes.

“Are you ready?!” Wu asked excitedly, hopping back and forth on his toes as a train thundered past overhead and fragments of plaster, paint, and rust that had been shaken loose floated down like snowflakes.

Mako ran his burnt fingers through his hair again. It must have been almost long enough to tie back, he thought.

“Yeah. Do your worst.”

Wu seemed uncertain. “Okay, but if I knock you out then it’s your own fault.”

Mako smiled and spread his arms invitingly.

Wu set his jaw, clenched his blue-knuckled fists and lunged at Mako.

Wu’s fist struck him in the sternum and Mako had to force himself not to laugh as Wu gasped, eyes filling with tears.

“Have you ever punched anyone before?” Mako asked as Wu crumpled slowly down into the foetal position.

Wu groaned, clutching his wrist.

Mako crouched down next to him.

“Have you ever even made a fist before?” Wu refused to look at him as he uncurled slowly, sniffing loudly and aloofly, pretending to pick at a stain on the dirty tank top they had found that morning on a washing line. “How’s your shoulder?”

“It’s okay, I guess.” Wu held his hand out, head thrown back melodramatically, looking very much like a Renaissance painting showing the suffering of some martyred saint. “Help me up?”

Mako sighed, offered Wu his hand and pulled him to his feet.

“Okay?” Mako asked.

“I can’t believe you convinced me to do this,” Wu grumbled, looking down at his sodden t-shirt. 

“I was vehemently against this from the very beginning,” Mako said wearily. “It was _your_ idea!”

“And it’s a brilliant idea!” Wu said proudly. “I have to learn how to defend myself.”

Mako saw the eagerness in Wu’s eyes but he bit his lip and shook his head.

“No. No. I’m not doing this anymore! Your shoulder’s injured and I’m still half convinced that you’ll break if I punch you. You’re going to get yourself killed if we keep doing this. You’ll … you’ll trip and break your neck or fall off the roof or something.” As if to punctuate his point, Mako kicked a crumpled beer can off the roof and waited, eyes clenched tightly shut, for the inevitable splash, but it was drowned out by a train.

“Mako,” Wu said, touching Mako’s bare shoulder lightly, “I almost died in that tavern.”

Mako’s skin was singing where Wu was touching him but he ignored it. Wu’s fingernails were bitten down and black with dirt, Mako noticed. His fingernails had been glassy and polished when they’d first met. When had they become so like Mako’s?

“And in that burger place last week,” Mako said. “And the sushi place the week before that. And the docks that same day. And …”

“You see?! And if you hadn’t been there every time then I’d have died. You see my problem?”

“Your problem isn’t that you can’t fight, it’s that you piss everyone off.”

“Really? Really, Mako?!” Wu slapped Mako on the shoulder. “And here I was thinking the fricking bounty on my head had something to do with it!”

Mako narrowed his eyes at Wu. “Okay. Fine. Fine, I’ll teach you the basics but that’s it.” Wu smiled broadly up at him. “What?”

Wu’s smile grew broader and he leant forwards as he whispered, “You can let go of my hand now.”

Mako burst into a coughing fit and almost pushed Wu away, hoping that Wu would blame the coughing on the smoke and the rain of the city. Waving Wu back a bit and praying that he hadn’t turned bright purple from embarrassment and stifled coughing, Mako rolled his shoulders.

“First … first rule of self-defence,” Mako spluttered as Wu bounced on his toes, punching the air. “Run away.”

“I thought the first rule was kick ‘em in the nuts.”

“No. It’s run away.” Mako sighed. “Look, nine times out of ten you’ll be absolutely totally outmatched. Although in your case it’s probably more like ninety-nine times out of a hundred.”

Wu’s fists dropped to his sides and he pouted at Mako. “Okay, that may be true, but it’s also hurtful.”

Mako rolled his eyes. “Second rule is …”

“Kick ‘em in the nuts!”

“… run away.”

Wu rolled his eyes. “Okay, Tyler Durden,” he muttered.

Mako pretended to ignore that, taking a deep breath. The wind picked up, sending chills through Mako. As the thick clouds parted slightly, for a fleeting moment cold grey sunlight streamed through the polluted air, turning the dark water beneath Mako and Wu to rippling silver.

“The next rule,” Mako said as the sunlight faded again, “if you can’t get away, use your elbows. You can’t punch for shit, so elbows and knees. Don’t be afraid to look stupid either.”

Wu made a face and lunged forwards, punching the air. “You look stupid,” he muttered.

Mako sighed and ignored him. “And final rule. Fight dirty.”

“Kick ‘em in the nuts!” Wu yelled excitedly!

“Also the throat, eyes, knees, and stomach.”

“Okay, okay,” Wu said, edging forwards. “Can I punch your pretty face now?”

Mako smiled and hung his head, the wind tugging at his hair so that it brushed over his lips. “Bring it.”

“I think you should take your shirt off first,” Wu said. Mako couldn’t decide if Wu was stalling or flirting. He decided the answer was both and kicked muddy water at him.

Wu yelped and dove at him, narrowly missing Mako’s fist.

“Keep moving,” Mako said, dodging Wu’s jab at his eyes and tapping him on a temple.

Wu was surprisingly light on his feet and he had good rhythm and Mako found that they were soon almost dancing, matching beats and finding a strange, tentative synchronicity. He was still a hopeless fighter though.

Mako could smell Wu’s sweat and feel his breath on his cheek.

“Don’t get too close,” Mako warned. “Keep your distance otherwise …”

Mako grabbed Wu’s arm, twisted it back and with an almost casual kick, swept his legs out from under him.

“Wu down!” Wu yelled and, as he fell, he grabbed a fistful of Mako’s hair and the pair toppled over together. Mako’s forehead glanced against the edge of a rusty, groaning air vent. His vision blurred for a second and when everything stopped spinning, Wu was pouting up at him, his lips a hairsbreadth from Mako’s. Startled, Mako turned his head slightly and he felt Wu’s lips brush against his nose.

Mako could feel his cheeks burning and his long hair was tickling Wu’s forehead and cheeks.

Wu bit back a smile and whispered, “You cheated.”

“How did I cheat?”

Wu blew a strand of Mako’s hair out of his face but made no move to sit up so Mako made no move to get off him.

“Your stupid pretty face and your stupid pretty hair distracted me,” Wu said, smiling.

Silence followed. Mako became strangely aware of Wu’s mouth and his eyes and he could almost see his own reflected in Wu’s. Mako felt himself beginning to get hard and realised, embarrassed, that because they were so close, Wu could feel it too.

Wu’s lips had opened a little and his eyes had begun to close when a small, dark spot of red appeared above an eyebrow.

“Oh shit,” Wu muttered, “you’re bleeding.”

Mako frowned and touched his forehead. When he looked at his fingers, they were smudged with blood.

“Did you hit your head on something when you fell?” Wu asked, pushing himself up onto his elbows as Mako rolled off him.

Mako wiped the blood away with the back of his hand and tried not to think about the armada of pathogens that were no doubt now coursing through his body.

“I think I hit the air vent,” he said, nodding at the vent which sat on the edge of the roof like a hunched, rusting gargoyle.

“We should go inside,” Wu said, crouching in front of Mako and brushing strands of his hair behind an ear so that he could see the gash on his forehead.

“Does it look bad?” Mako asked, his vision beginning to blur as hot blood seeped slowly into his eye.

Wu’s face went through several different contortions. Eventually he turned pale and ran to the edge of the roof and vomited.

“I told you street meat was bad!” Mako laughed.

“Not the meat.” Wu wiped his mouth and shivered. “Can’t stand blood.”

“Is it bad?” Mako asked again. Wu nodded. “Are my brains leaking out?” Wu shook his head.

Mako got his feet and stretched.

“Well then,” he said, “it can’t be that bad then.”

In the end, Mako, still bleeding, had to help Wu down the stairs.

Wu sunk into the faded cushions of the sofa, sighing loudly and almost melting into the stained fabric.

“You must think I’m a … I can’t think of any word for coward that doesn’t also mean vagina.”

“Chicken?” Mako suggested, helpfully, from the bathroom where he was examining the cut in the rust-flecked mirror.

Wu grunted and appeared a moment later in the doorway. He offered Mako the disinfectant and sewing kit Mako had stolen from Grandma Yin’s almost a week ago.

Mako took the disinfectant but said the cut didn’t need sewing up.

Wu sat down on the edge of the bath and looked at his hands in his lap.

“You think I am? A chicken?”

Mako shrugged. “No. Blood is just something you get used to, I suppose.”

“You’ve never thrown up at blood, have you?” Wu said, almost accusingly.

Mako sat down next to Wu. He looked down at his bare feet, pale against the dark, damp-spotted floor.

“I got close to it once.”

He clenched his burnt fist tightly. The shiny pink skin felt tight, as though it had been put in the wash and shrunk a few sizes.

Wu saw Mako squeezing his fist tightly shut and laid a soft, dark hand over it.

“Was it when … when that happened,” he asked, nodding almost imperceptibly at Mako’s burnt arm.

Mako made a face. “Kind of. I mean …” he sighed. “I rescued a pilot from a crash during what we thought would be the Republic’s last stand.” Mako relaxed his hand and Wu slipped his cold fingers into Mako’s burnt hand. “I managed to pull her free of the wreckage and her arm was … her suit had been torn to shreds and her arm was just sort of … hanging there. This limp, crushed, burnt, red thing. That’s when I wanted to throw up. I hadn’t even noticed that my arm had been burnt too. I was just so …” Mako trailed off.

“What happened to her?” Wu asked.

Mako chuckled a little. “She almost knocked out the medic. She wanted to go back up there. Afterwards, I saw her at the hospital when I was getting my arm bandaged up. They’d had to remove the arm and she …” Mako laughed, “she was pissing the staff off to no end because she kept taking the heart monitor and stuff apart. She was building a new arm, right there in her hospital bed out of scraps.”

“I don’t have any war stories,” Wu said, apologetically. “I sat in my penthouse watching TV for most of it.”

Mako squeezed Wu’s hand and looked through his hair at him. “You don’t have to apologise for that.” Wu made a vague shrugging motion. “You’re making up for lost time,” Mako grinned and poked him in his shoulder where the bullet had torn a chunk of flesh away, making Wu wince and smile at the same time. “You’ll have plenty of stories before this shit storm is over.”

Wu shuddered. “Shit, I hope not! One war story is enough for me.” He looked up at Mako and the smiled. “You want me to shave you again?”

Mako rubbed his jaw. It was beginning to get a little itchy, he thought. But he shook his head and smiled.

“No, I think I’ve decided to grow a beard.”

Wu smiled even wider and patted Mako on a stubbed cheek.

“That is the smartest decision you have made since we met! Has anyone ever told you you’d look amazing with a beard?”

“Only you,” Mako said, smiling.

Wu laughed but the laugh turned into a shiver.

“Right,” Mako said, pointing commandingly out into the lounge-stroke-bedroom. “Out. You’ll catch your death in here.”

Wu rolled his eyes and was still rolling his eyes when, sitting on the sofa, Mako draped a blanket around his shoulders. Mako sat down beside him, put an arm around him, and kicked the television that was sitting on the floor by the sofa and it sparked into life. Mako had found it in the stairwell two days ago and, despite its cracked screen and inability to get anything beyond two and a half interference choked channels, it seemed to work fairly well.

They kept the volume so low that it was nearly inaudible so as not to draw attention to their ostensibly empty, crime scene apartment. Neither of them minded though; they didn’t even mind the vivid smudge of colour across the screen caused by the crack or that the signal stopped and started and hiccupped like an old car so that they only caught small fragments of the show that was either a comedy about polar bears, or a documentary on endangered waitresses. It was nice to just have the illusion of normalcy, a break from the tedium of hiding and the panic of running.

Wu was soon dozing, his head in the hollow between Mako’s shoulder and his chest.

Mako didn’t remember falling asleep, but he must have done, because he was suddenly and rudely jerked awake by a slap across the face.

Blinking confusedly, Mako looked around, wondering for a moment where he was. He was still in the apartment, he realised. Wu was still leaning against him and the television was still flicking between programmes erratically. So who were the men standing over him?

Before Mako could try to work out who they were and whether or not he should be afraid, he was slapped again, hard. Wu woke up and, startled, almost fell off the sofa.

Mako rubbed his jaw. He could feel the skin already beginning to bruise.

He looked around, pretending to be twisting the crick out of his neck, and counted ten men and women in the flat. Possibly more.

Mako assumed at first that they were more bounty hunters or Empire agents and wondered why he was still alive, and why they seemed to be more or less ignoring Wu.

“Grandma Yin sends her apologies,” the man who had slapped Mako said, slapping him again.

“That’s a relief,” Mako said without thinking, glad that they were after him, not Wu.

“Smart ass,” someone behind him said, and whacked him in the back of his head with something hard and possibly specially chosen for whacking heads.

“I’m sure we can sort this out,” Mako said getting to his feet which he realised were still bare, “without resorting to violence.”

The two men in front of him pulled handguns from their jackets.

Instinctively, Mako raised his hands.

“If you’d just let my friend go, you can perforate me to Grandma Yin’s arrhythmic heart’s content. He had nothing to do with the robbery. Or the criminal damage. Or the grammar lessons.”

The men looked around the room at their friends, then at each other, and shrugged.

“Alright, I guess,” one of them said, voice muffled slightly behind his ski mask. He waved Wu aside with the barrel of the gun.

Wu looked up at Mako.

“It’s alright, Wu. I …”

Whatever Mako was going to say was stifled by a breathless gasp as a truncheon was rammed into his stomach. Doubling over, his lungs refusing to refill, Mako thought he could taste the street meat coming back up.

Falling to his knees, Mako threw up.

“For fuck’s sake!” the man whose boot Mako had vomited on groaned. “Why the fuck did you do that?”

Mako thought he was talking to him, and was struggling to breathe, let alone answer, but then a woman’s – or perhaps a boy’s – voice answered.

“I thought he was going to make a move for your gun!”

“Idiot,” the man with vomit on his boot muttered. “Of course he wasn’t going for the gun! He’s not stupid like you, you twat.” 

“Fuck off. It’s not like those boots are real anyway. They’re fucking knockoffs.”

“I’ll knock you off in a minute if you don’t …”

The bickering was interrupted by a gurgle: one of only a few noises that is sure to stop almost any argument in its tracks.

While they had argued about boots, Mako had managed to breathe again and, looking at the boots in question, had seen the strap of a holster wrinkling the fabric of the jeans at the ankle. Moving quickly, Mako had tugged at the jeans, yanked the small, curved knife from the ankle holster and, standing up so quickly he almost threw up again, he had thrust it into Knockoff-Boots’ throat. Hence the gurgle.

Mako twisted the blade out, drops of blood leaping through the air as though trying to return, not to the throat, but to the knife.

Stunned, nobody moved.

“Wu,” Mako said, calmly. “Run.”

The fighting broke out as though a dam had been holding it back and had suddenly collapsed. Mako lost the knife in the chaos almost instantly, the hot arterial blood making the polished bone handle slip through Mako’s fingers like sand. After the first few seconds, Mako began to perceive the fight as simply a series of disconnected breakages: he felt a man’s leg break, pinned between the television and Mako’s foot; he felt a jaw break and teeth rattle as his elbow struck someone’s face; the sofa broke, crunching wood and splintering bone becoming one; he felt tiny shards of glass from a broken window pepper his cheek like rain; he felt his nose break as he failed to dodge a rusty pipe that swung at him; and he felt his finger break beneath someone’s foot when he was tackled to the floor.

Even the eerie silence that had descended over the room, the building, the city, eventually broke, shattering more violently than any of the bones or furniture.

“Stop!” Wu cried. “Stop! Leave him alone!”

Mako peered through the forest of limbs around him, struggling to see with his eye already swelling shut and face pressed into the floor. He could just about see Wu standing by the wonky sofa, chin up, shoulders square, voice trembling only a little as he clutched Bumi’s smoking gun.

“You want me! I am Prince Wu! Rightful ruler of the Earth Empire and,” Wu’s commanding tone faded and his voice began to trail off,” and … there’s pretty fucking big bounty on my head.”

The hitmen hesitated for just a second. But a second was all that Mako needed.

He squirmed out from under the woman who was pinning him to the foul-smelling floor, kicked her in the head, and ran to the window. Wu was running too and, without slowing, Mako reached out, grabbed his hand and they dove through the shattered window.

The cold water closed around them, knocking Mako’s breath from his body and leaching the strength from his limbs. Still gripping Wu’s hand, Mako took a second to work out which way was up, and swam blindly through the dark, sour water. His lungs were burning for air but he kept going, not daring to break the surface. He kept going, swimming through the freezing darkness until the need to open his mouth and fill his lungs was so maddening that, given a second longer, he would have done it there and then.

He felt a tug on his arm, and let himself be pulled up through the darkness. A sharp, painful cold filled his lungs and he became certain that he was drowning until he realised that it was the cold night air filling his mouth and nose and chest. He clung to Wu and tried to keep his nose above the water long enough to breathe. Wu wrapped his arm under Mako’s, trying to keep him afloat.

After a few painful seconds and a few painful gasps of air, Mako nodded towards the side of a building that overhung, seemed even to float on, the murky water. A metal ladder was bolted to the side of the building and ran up to the railway track overhead. Wu went first up the ladder and Mako followed, not daring to look back.

He climbed as quickly as he could with his bare feet slipping on the slimy, rusted metal rungs and his hands stiff with cold. He wished he hadn’t taken his shoes off after messing about on the roof with Wu.

By the time they reached the narrow and precarious little walkway that ran beside the track, Mako was shivering so violently he could barely cling to the railing. As if that didn’t make it hard enough, little shacks had been built along the track, clinging like barnacles to the shuddering, swaying bridge, and Mako and Wu had to scramble over their plywood and tarpaulin rooves.

The track ran between the closely squashed buildings, almost ten stories above the ground. There was a small walkway wedged between two buildings that served as a platform and was seemingly held in place by a zigzagging wrought iron staircase going down to the ground, and though it was only a few yards from Mako and Wu, it felt like an eternity to reach. Every time a train came thundering towards them, they had no other choice but to press themselves against the scoured and pollution-worn brickwork as the train rushed past, mere millimetres from them.

Eventually they managed to scramble up onto the platform where they stood dripping, with foul river water, sweat and, in Mako’s case, blood. A train screeched to a halt, the doors swung open reluctantly, and Mako pushed Wu aboard.

The train was just pulling away when two men, big bruised men who looked like they should have been wearing ski masks, clambered up the last few steps to the platform and lunged at the closing doors.

Mako flinched as the train lurched and shuddered and thundered through the city. He sat heavily on the floor, head in his hands.

He had avoided the trains so far. Too many cameras, too many people who might recognise Wu. They’d have to get off soon, vanish again. He was so tired. Maybe they could go up to the Middle City. No, they’d need passports for that. And they didn’t have the money, time, or really anything else to get them.

Mako watched the jumbled mess of the city racing past through the dirty windows. Then he watched Wu and an anger rose up inside him, an anger that slowly warmed his tired, aching body.

He staggered to his feet and glared at Wu.

“What the fuck were you thinking?!” he snapped loudly over the shriek of the train, not caring if the other passengers crammed into the carriage heard him.

The train tore through a gap between two buildings, smaller shacks wedged in overhead blocking out any light, and the carriage was plunged into darkness.

When they emerged back into the half-light of the city, he moved closer to Wu and snarled, “How could you be so fucking stupid?”

Wu didn’t say anything.

Mako hit one of the clear plastic dividers in the carriage where someone had scrawled ‘Kuvira sucked my cock on this train’. Beneath it, someone had scratched, perhaps with a key, ‘Hou-Ting wiped her mouth’.

“Why did you tell them who you are?!” Mako shouted over the din of the train as it began a breakneck descent down to the ground. “They know who you are now! All this time spent protecting you and … Fuck! Why didn’t you just run like I told you?!”

“Because …” Wu swallowed, and a part of Mako knew what he was going to say even before Wu did. “Because I love you.”


End file.
